Water supply device Hydraulic column

Water towers served as such devices. They had a brick or stone octagon at the base, on which a water collection tank with a capacity of 60–75 m³ was installed.

Water was supplied through pressure mains laid underground below the freezing line of the soil. Various columns were also used here: collapsible, fire, for watering horses, locomotive.

Hydro columns were of two types in design: wall-mounted and intertrack. Wall-mounted ones were fixed to the walls of water towers that stood along the track. Such columns had dispensing trunks.

Track hydro columns were installed in close proximity to the tracks. The track crane consisted of a vertical rotating cast-iron pipe with a horizontal filling trunk. A flow-calming cone was hung on the trunk. The filling pipe was installed on a cast-iron pedestal. At the top of the filling pipe there was a lantern, at night it signaled its position relative to the tracks.

The design of the crane provided for the rapid and complete removal of water from the vertical pressure pipe to prevent rapid freezing. Additionally, in winter, a stove was installed here, the heat from which also went into the underground space. Later, special accelerator devices began to be used to collect water. The simplest of them is a tank installed on a hydraulic column, into which water was collected between refueling of steam locomotives.

Railway construction most often began in areas that had not been developed in the course of economic activity. There were no highways (dirt roads) there. Already at the stage of surveying and tracing new lines, sources of water supply for economic and domestic purposes were sought. Artificial reservoirs were also created, in which water was accumulated from natural sources, as well as during the melting of snow and rain. Water was needed for economic purposes, primarily for steam locomotives, which were then the only type of locomotives. It was necessary not only to find a source, but also to determine its productivity, as well as to determine the quality of the water itself, that is, whether it could be used in locomotive boilers and for domestic purposes.

The water for feeding locomotive boilers should not be cloudy and hard, or contain substances that destroy the walls of the boiler. Hard water is water that contains a significant amount of dissolved mineral impurities in the form of carbonic, sulphate and chloride compounds of calcium and magnesium. Its hardness was determined by the amount of salts present, and in the case of increased hardness, the water had to be subjected to special treatment in order to soften it. And the water that was used for household needs should not contain substances harmful to humans, pathogenic bacteria, or living organisms. It also should not have a smell.

Supplying such a large amount of water required special devices that would accumulate it and create a powerful pressure. The collection of water should not have taken more than 8-20 minutes.

The main accumulator and distributor of pressure water supply were water towers, which were previously used in industrial production.