Talk:Water trough

Hard/Soft Water + water treatment?
I know that water treatment was applied to water at many loco depots (and presumably in water towers elsewhere), to soften the water to reduce boiler scale. But was the water fed to water-troughs also artificially-softened? EdJogg (talk) 11:00, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hello Ed, it's ChrisRed, in my unlogged mode. I am pretty certain that the water used in most troughs was untreated.  I had a look at a map of trough locations on both the LNWR main line out of Euston (that's London for you international folks) and the GWR main line out of Paddington.  In almost all cases the troughs are near a plentiful source of natural surface or river water.  I seem to remember reading somewhere that northern-based crews working into Euston were encouraged to take as much water as possible from Bushey troughs on the way in and out, rather than use 'London Water'.  I never realised before just how much water a tender could lift from troughs.  I always thought that they just topped-up the tank, but after clicking on a few links on this page, it is easy to work out that an express doing 'a fair old clatter' could lift a good 3000 gallons plus in a good scoop.  I'm getting fascinated by these things, because I am just too young to have ever actually seen a train use troughs apart from on YouTube (See Youtube \ dillicar troughs \ retro steam in the lune gorge).  Wouldn't it be nice if one of our heritage lines with a good straight run of 'main' (say, the Great Central) could set up a short demo section of trough.  Not much of a scoop at 25-30mph, I know, but at least it would give an idea. 86.148.252.181 (talk) 19:50, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Jerkwater
I removed a piece that claimed that this method of getting water gave rise to the term "Jerkwater town". I removed it because. Well its wrong. Jerkwater describes gathering water with a bucket from a stream to fill the boiler, thus a Jerkwater town was a town WITHOUT a water trough 123.3.181.200 (talk) 13:48, 9 February 2014 (UTC) 5hifty

This article is mostly about the British system, describing the history, locations, restrictions on Royal Train etc. So why does the title reflect American usage when only a couple of sentences describe American systems? --Pete (talk) 09:49, 30 November 2014 (UTC)