Water troughs - a stolen idea

[just plain craig]

I really don't know what to call them but I'm talking about how the RR's used to water on the fly with a water canal down the middle of the track. My aunt insist that her brother invented how to do that and it was stolen by Pennsy. She said he called the RR company and 3-4 men came down and looked over his plans for hours and asked hundreds of questions. They left saying "they didn't think the idea would work" and a couple of years later they started doing exactly what he described. I believe this was back in the 30's or 40's and being a black man didn't have much chance of going up against the Pennsy since he had no real proof except the drawings.

[3rdrail]

Should have gone down to the patent office first. You'd probably be nicely set up financially as the New York Central used them quite a bit. Was he W.F.Kiesel ? We just had a thread on the Central's pans here: http://railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=75246
On page two of the thread, there's a link to a patent blueprint for a scoop by W.F.Kiesel, dated 1894.

[just plain craig]

No his name was William "Bill" Govens. She's getting old so I don't know how true it is but for someone that never mentioned trains to come up with something like this was real strange.

[3rdrail]

Kiesel, it sounds, improved the technology which already was in use in Germany and patented a new scoop design in 1894. Would your uncle be old enough to be around at an appropriate time ? Anybody having anything to do with steam locomotive inventions would have to be born by around 1930, I would think, and that would be for the very end of the steam era.

[mitch kennedy]

Here's a link to a rather exhautive report on PRR (and other) track pans, by the great-grandson of the PRR's famous chief engineer Kiesel (designer of the distinctive PRR trailing truck and also for the standard engines;E6/H8-9-10 and K4/L1. It states as shown in this topic that Kiesel got rights to a German-patented system in 1894, and track pans were in wide-spread use by the turn of the century. The link shows more detail as well. So it seems that if the Germans had a track pan system in place by 1894, someone in PRR territory would be hard-pressed to claim the idea was theirs. Not to say someone could't have sketched and even designed a complementary scheme, but it seems the PRR got their's fair and square.
http://jimquest.com/writ/trains/pans/scoop2.htm

[scottychaos]

I really don't know what to call them but I'm talking about how the RR's used to water on the fly with a water canal down the middle of the track. My aunt insist that her brother invented how to do that and it was stolen by Pennsy. She said he called the RR company and 3-4 men came down and looked over his plans for hours and asked hundreds of questions. They left saying "they didn't think the idea would work" and a couple of years later they started doing exactly what he described. I believe this was back in the 30's or 40's and being a black man didn't have much chance of going up against the Pennsy since he had no real proof except the drawings.

Craig,
sorry, but it sounds like you have come across a "family myth"..they happen a lot!
(I have started doing genealogy..you would be amazed ho much fiction there is in everyone's family history!

Considering its the year 2010, and the idea was patented in 1894, and the fact that your aunt is still alive..
unless your uncle was born about 50 years before his sister, sorry, but the math just doesnt work..

of course, it is possible your uncle came up with the idea independently in the 1930's..
but even if that is true, im sure the PRR knew all about the idea by then, and its unlikely they got the idea from your Uncle,
even if he did think of the idea 40 years after it had been invented by someone else..

Scot