CPR Water Tower (Enclosed)

[Prairie Trains]

No problem. Happy to answer your question. Canadian Pacific and even Canadian National enclosed their water tanks especially in colder regions of the country. On the inside is the standard type of water tank you'd commonly see track side. They just covered them with a house of sorts if you will. The smoke jack is for the boiler which sits under the water tower. The chimney for the smoke jack goes up through the tank and heats the water to keep it from freezing.[/quote]

Thanks for the explanation, so the windows are just cosmetic?[/quote]

The windows where functional, as most of these water towers were built long before electricity. The upper windows light the walkways around the tank and the lower ones let in light to the timber work and stove below the tank. The walkways around the tank where about two and a half feet wide and where used to maintain and repair the tank, such as fix leaks and adjust the tie rods. The distance between the outer walls and tank allowed warm air to circulate in the winter to keep the water from freezing. The stove pipe ran up alongside of the tank, not through it. Because a leak in the pipe would put out the fire and endanger the tank of freezing, and the cold water around a stove pipe would keep it cold and soot and creosote would build up very fast and cut off the fires draft.

I used Kanamodels kits for my water tower but substituted other windows that were more C.N.R. appropriate. I also used a cardboard tube from an iced tea container as a tank inside so you could not see light from the window on the opposite side of the building.