page_title: Tender (rail)
section_title: Canteen
hierarchical_section_title: Tender (rail) / Tender design variants / Canteen
caption_attribution_description: Bittern at the back of the York National railway museum. Taken from the train while on the way to Edinburgh
context_page_description: A tender or coal-car is a special rail vehicle hauled by a steam locomotive containing its fuel and water. Steam locomotives consume large quantities of water compared to the quantity of fuel, so their tenders are necessary to keep them running over long distances. A locomotive that pulls a tender is called a tender locomotive. Locomotives that do not have tenders and carry all their fuel and water on board the locomotive itself are called tank locomotives.
  A brake tender is a tender that is heavy and used to provide greater braking efficiency.
context_section_description: 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 & Western 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, Union Pacific uses canteens with its steam locomotives 844 and 4014 (as well as 3985 prior to 2010) 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. 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.
caption: "Bittern" with second tender at York
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