Steam era Water Column comes to life in Mysuru Rail Museum

Steam-era Water Column on displayed at Mysuru Rail Museum in Mysuru.

Rail Museum in the city has added another attraction to its fleet of exhibits with a 1964-built water column, that has come alive.

South Western Railway (SWR), with an intention to add more value to the museum, restored the steam-era water column to its full functional order. The water column is on display for the visitors.

The museum has several artefacts like a century-old 250-kg capacity mechanical weighing machine and Toy Train station which is incidentally a replica of stations built during the time of the Mysore State Railway (MSR).

The MSR was owned by the erstwhile Princely State of Mysore, headed by the Wadiyar kings. Wooden pedestals and ‘Coach cafeteria’, an old meter gauge coach converted into a restaurant, are a few to be named among the others.

Many railway stations during the steam era had a water column for filling water into the water tank in the tender trailing the steam locomotive, which also had an enclosure for the fuel for locomotives, such as coal, wood or oil.

Water was one of the most important elements used by a steam locomotive. When heated, the water turns into steam. The volume of water expands as it turns into steam inside the boiler of the locomotive, thereby creating high pressure. The expansion of steam pushes the pistons connected to the driving wheels, thus operating the locomotive.

In standard operating conditions, steam locomotives consume about 110-115 litres of water for travelling a distance of one mile (1.6 km). A Metre Gauge YP Class steam locomotive that was in use for hauling passenger-carrying trains could hold 3,000 gallons of water and 9.5 metric tonnes of coal in its tender.

Other tank steam locomotives had water tanks ranging from 300 to 1,750 gallons. Some tenders of Broad Gauge locomotives were designed to carry 15 tonnes of coal and 6,000 gallons of water but the water capacity was later reduced to 5,500 gallons to keep the axle load under the 18.5 tonnne limit.

Water was perhaps the most significant limitation with most steam locomotives hauling loaded trains at express speeds necessitating refilling every 100 miles (160 kms). Nine tonnes of coal gave about 560 kilometers of range.

Divisional Railway Manager of SWR Mysuru Division Rahul Agarwal said that the Rail Museum visitors will be happy to see the fully functional 1964-built water column and appreciate the critical role of this rustic system-equipment of the Railways during the long years of steam traction in all parts of the country.

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