Colorado Railroad Water Tanks ~ Colorado Rail Annual No. 31

Hard bound; about 8½'' x 11"; 289 acid-free-paper pages; over 260 color and black & white photographs, maps and illustrations of tanks and water equipment! Drawings, illustrations, maps and photographs in digital form are also included on a CD/DVD. Tanks that still remain are listed and located with GPS data for those wishing to visit these reminders of Colorado's railroad past. Colorado Railroad Water Tanks is a historical tour of the water tanks of Colorado's steam railroad era. Steam locomotives required a large quantity of water to generate the required amount of steam for motive power. Colorado railroads operated over six hundred tanks located along the approximately 6,000 miles of track. The six hundred tanks and their locations are listed in an index and documented with construction dates, sizes, water sources and pumping equipment, when the information is available. The process and history of bringing water from its source to the locomotive's tender is explained and illustrated.