around 1842 for the
Saint-Étienne to
Lyon railway in France In the early days of railroading, tenders were rectangular boxes, with a bunker for coal or wood surrounded by a U-shaped water jacket. This form was retained up to the end of steam on many coal-burning engines. Oil-burning engines substituted a fuel tank for the bunker. Variations on this plan were made for operational reasons, in attempts to economize on structure.
Vanderbilt In early 1901,
Cornelius Vanderbilt III filed a patent application covering a new type of tender. Vanderbilt was the great-grandson of the founder of the
New York Central Railroad; his tender featured a cylindrical body like a
tank car with a fuel bunker set into the front end. This design was soon adopted by a number of
American railroads with oil-burning and coal-burning locomotives. Compared to rectangular tenders, cylindrical Vanderbilt tenders were stronger, lighter, and held more fuel in relation to surface area. Railroads who were noted for using Vanderbilt tenders include: •
New Zealand Railways Department (
NZR AB class,
NZR J class,
NZR G class (1928)). •
Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway •
Seaboard Air Line Railroad •
South African Railways Whaleback in 1928 A form peculiar to oil-burning engines was the "whaleback" tender (also sometimes called a "turtle-back" or "loaf" tender). This was a roughly half-cylindrical form with the rounded side up; the forward portion of the tank held the oil, while the remainder held the water. This form was particularly associated with the
Southern Pacific.
Corridor with corridor tender For the introduction of the
London and North Eastern Railway's non-stop
Flying Scotsman service on 1 May 1928, ten special tenders were built with means to reach the locomotive from the train through a narrow passageway inside the tender tank plus a flexible bellows
connection linking it with the leading coach. The passageway, which ran along the right-hand side of the tender, was high and wide. Further corridor tenders were built at intervals until 1938, and eventually there were 22; at various times, they were coupled to engines of classes
A1, A3,
A4 and
W1, but by the end of 1948, all were running with class A4 locomotives. Use of the corridor tender for changing crews on the move in an A4 loco is shown in the 1953 British Transport film
Elizabethan Express, the name of another London-Edinburgh non-stop train. The
London Midland and Scottish Railway also possessed a solitary corridor tender from the late 1940s onwards, built purely for purposes of mobile locomotive testing using a
dynamometer car etc. rather than to give any operating advantage in revenue earning service.
Water cart locomotive with a "water cart" tender The
water cart was a type of high-capacity tender used by the
London and South Western Railway in England. Unlike the usual British six-wheel tender, it was a double-bogie design with inside bearings. This gave it a distinctive appearance because the wheels were very obvious.
Canteen with second tender at York An additional tender which holds only water is called a "canteen" or "auxiliary tender". During the steam era, these were not frequently used.
Water tanks were placed at regular intervals along the track, making a canteen unnecessary in most cases. However, there were times that canteens proved economical. The
Norfolk and Western Railway used canteens with its giant
2-8-8-2 Y Class and
2-6-6-4 A Class locomotives on coal trains, timed freights, fast freights, and merchandise freights. Use of the canteen allowed one of the
water stops to be skipped, allowing the train to avoid climbing a hill from a dead stop. Currently, the
Union Pacific Railroad uses two canteens with its steam locomotives
844 and
4014 on excursion trains. Virtually all the trackside tanks were removed when steam locomotives were retired. Nowadays,
fire hydrant hookups are used, which fills the tanks much more slowly. The canteens allow for greater range between stops. Canteens were also used on the
Trans-Australian Railway which crosses the waterless
Nullarbor Plain. In New South Wales these vehicles were called "gins", and were used in the predominantly dry western region and on some branch lines. Now prominently use on heritage excursions due to the lack of places with accessible water points. During the catastrophic 2019-2020 bushfire season, as fires devastated towns near the Rail Transport Museum at Thirlmere, south of Sydney, a diesel locomotive from the museum hauled two gins to help replenish firefighting tanker trucks. In the United Kingdom, a canteen was used on the preserved
Flying Scotsman during enthusiast excursions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The
water troughs that had previously supplied long-distance expresses had been removed during
dieselisation of the railway network. On 25 July 2009,
Bittern made a 188-mile run from King's Cross to York non-stop using a second tender. As railways in Britain tend to be much shorter than those in the US, the canteen was not an economical proposition.
Fuel tender train with tank car supplying fuel to the locomotives, reducing the number of fuel stops required on the transcontinental journey across Australia Sometimes a tender will be used for a
diesel locomotive. This is typically a tank car with a fuel line that connects to the locomotive and
MU connections to allow locomotives behind the tender to be controlled remotely. The
Burlington Northern Railroad used fuel tenders in remote territory where fuel was expensive. Diesel fuel could be bought cheaply and loaded into the tender. A common consist was two
EMD SD40-2s with a tender between them. Some of the tenders survived the
Burlington Northern Santa Fe merger but retain the black and green BN colors. The
Southern Pacific Railroad also briefly experimented with fuel tenders for diesels. Some
slugs have fuel tanks and serve as fuel tenders for the attached locomotives, especially those that are converted from locomotives that are retired due to worn-out diesels. The
Union Pacific Railroad used fuel tenders on its
turbines. These tenders were originally used with steam locomotives, then reworked to hold heavy "Bunker C" fuel oil. Fuel capacity was about . When the turbines were retired, some of the tenders were reworked to hold water, and employed as canteens for steam locomotives. Fuel tenders have also been the cause of controversy for railroads, in particular the Soo Line. In the late 1970s, the management of the railroad discovered that it was cheaper for them to fill their fuel tenders at Chicago, and then transport the fuel to Shoreham Wisconsin. Doing this avoided the railroad needing to pay extra taxes on the fuel, and the system was continued until the mid-1980s. When the states of
Illinois and
Wisconsin caught onto the railroad's actions, legislation was passed which charged the same over the road tax on the fuel movement over rail which was charged for truck drivers. Doing this completely negated the benefit of moving the fuel by way of the tenders, and Soo quietly withdrew the practice. Tenders have also been developed to carry
liquefied natural gas for diesel locomotives converted to run on that fuel.
Brake tender On
British railways, brake tenders were low, heavy wagons used with early main line
diesel locomotives. One or two were coupled in front or behind the locomotive to provide extra braking power when hauling unfitted or partially fitted freight trains (trains formed from wagons not fitted with automatic brakes). They were required as the lighter weight of the new diesel locomotives, compared to steam, meant that they had comparable tractive effort (and thus train hauling capacity) but less braking ability. Originally intended to be used in North East England, where they were usually propelled (pushed) by the locomotive, and later used in other regions. On the
Southern Region they were normally hauled behind the locomotive. The body was filled with scrap steel to raise the weight of the vehicle to – tons; consequently increasing the available brake force. In North America, brake tenders were often referred to as
brake sleds, and were conversely primarily used around railroad yards or larger, rail-served industries. Several railroads used brake sleds in and around hump yards, including the
Southern Pacific Railroad and
St. Louis–San Francisco Railway. Many of these were converted from redundant steam locomotive tenders, and some from redundant locomotives - however, unlike
slugs, these did not retain traction motors.
Powered tender Certain early British steam locomotives were fitted with powered tenders. As well as holding coal and water, these had wheels powered from the locomotive to provide greater tractive effort. These were abandoned for economic reasons; railwaymen working on locomotives so equipped demanded extra pay as they were effectively running two locomotives. However, the concept was tried again on the
Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway's
River Mite, and the
Garratt locomotive may be seen as an extension of this principle. Powered tenders were also seen on the
triplex locomotives in the United States, but these experiments were not considered successful due to the varying mass of the tender. Powered tenders were used extensively on geared logging steam locomotives like the
Shay,
Climax, and
Heisler types where the steep grades and heavy trains necessitated the extra tractive effort. Nowadays, slugs are used with
diesel-electric locomotives. The slug has
traction motors that draw electricity from the locomotive's
prime mover to provide extra
traction.
German practice In Germany, attention was given to ensuring that tender locomotives were capable of moderately high speeds in reverse, pushing their tenders. The numerous
DRB Class 50 (
2-10-0) locomotives, for example, were capable of in either direction, and were commonly used on
branch lines without turning facilities. A source of possible confusion with regards to German locomotives is that in
German, '
means a tank locomotive. A locomotive with a separate, hauled tender is a '. ==Tender-first operations==