The LNER Encyclopedia

I found this JW Armstrong shot of an A2 taking a drink at Lucker troughs and was amazed at the details around the troughs, note the placing of the sleepers i assume to prevent the ballast washing out and the excess water being returned via ditches to the original feeder stream, there is so much more to this particular piece of infrastructure than i first thought.

It does appear the water was being returned to nature. These troughs have not featured in my brief look into evaporation water arrangements. Further south the spilt water was recovered as it had been softened. I get the impression softened water was not too good for the environment and certainly the by-products were hazardous.

Are there any other pictures of these troughs showing the storage tank etc?

I have posted on a local history site asking for more pics.

Water Troughs were covered in some detail in an article by the late Malcolm Crawley in LNER Study Group (as it then was) Journal 46.

The attached photos were taken in April 1969 and show the troughs still in water. Would they be used by diesel hauled passenger trains to provide water for steam heating? The milepost on the left hand side is MP50, from Newcastle.

Deltics and EE type 4s were fitted with scoops.

Never seen a "Lower Scoop Here" sign, were these a later addition perhaps replacing the usual white board with the black zigzag pattern on it? My old stomping ground, Langley Troughs, only had, as far as I can remember, the zigzag signage.

Also it goes without saying that a fireman or a secondman on the EE type 4 diesels that could re-blemish there boiler water for steam heating purposes had to be pretty quick raising the water scoop at the end of the water trough otherwise unwanted pieces of ballast could be picked up by the water scoop as well.

I was recently watching a railway dvd and it was mentioned that on the west coast route back in the early 1960s a ex-LMS Duchess working a northbound express and 'wanting a drink' possibly over the 'Hest Bank' troughs(?) south of Carnforth ran over the water troughs and they were frozen up anyway the loco went further north with the water in the gauge glass getting lower and lower so by the time the loco and it's train eventually rolled into Carnforth station the water in the gauge glass was nearly out of sight in the glass only to find that the water column at the end of the platform was also frozen up!. Anyway after a frantic few minutes with both the driver and fireman along with the station staff they managed to get the water column un-frozen in double-quick time thereby giving the Duchess a much needed long cold drink of water.