What a difficult task to perform - feeding a thirsty steam locomotive bucket by bucket. I guess war truely is hell! You can tell the Germans must have been running out of money because the swastika is hand drawn on the rear of the tender. Thanks for sharing this bit of history.
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If you like war movies centered around trains; I suggest The Train (Burt Lancaster), La Battaille du Rail (Battle of the Rails), and Von Ryan's Express.
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I admit to being a post-steam railfan, but one does have to wonder how they were able to use such LARGE chunks of coal ? These locos look too old to have had any type of mechanical crushers / stokers.
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Excellent photo, Gianfranco -thank you for sharing! (Foto eccellente, Gianfranco -grazie per ripartirsi)
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This is a fascinating surprise on Railpictures. It does not look so long ago... but it is. Thank you for showing this. I hope there is more.
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Truly an amazing moment in history captured on film for the world to see. Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful but yet haunting image.
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| Posted by on January 25, 2011 | |
Such a neat photograph.
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| Posted by FrankB on January 26, 2011 | |
Mechanical stokers were generally not featured on european engines. Large chunks of coal were not a problem as the stoker simply would have used his hammer to crush them into smaller chunks before scooping them up with his shovel.
There are books published with foto's from Walter Hollnagel, fascinating stuff.
Colour pictures always seem to make WWI images always much more real and gripping.
The picture also illustrates the immense problems the railroad workers had to deal with, as allied airpower increasingly targeted the railroads of the Reich. By this stage in the war, gasoline was in very short supply so everything had to move by rail.
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| Posted by on February 7, 2011 | |
That's outstanding! Remarkable honestly at how interesting this scene is. A true piece of history, and a well derserving PCA
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What a wonderful view! Probably the most remarkable photo I have seen on Railpictures. Please offer other such views for all of us to enjoy! Many thanks.
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A photo worth a thousand words. Thanks for posting this!
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I see the picture, but have to think that they must be adding treatment chemicals to make the water more suitable for the boiler, instead of filling the tender with water. Watering a steam locomotive with buckets is implausible / ridiculous (notwithstanding, talking about movies, the sequence in 587: The Great Train Robbery--yeah, kids with buckets fill a 22,000 gallon tender!). For example, if you have a 10,000 gallon (38,000 l) tender, and it holds enough water for about 100 miles (161 km), and you use 5 gallon (19 l) buckets, just putting in enough water to make your trip would take 2,000 bucket-loads. Even if you can dump a bucket every 5 seconds, it would take almost 3 hours to water enough to run 100 miles. Surely in that time someone could run a large hose to a water source?!
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It's the bucket brigade!
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