tank engine

English

Noun

tank engine (plural tank engines)

1. A steam locomotive that carries its fuel and water containers on the locomotive frames rather than in a separate tender.
   • 1939 September, D. S. Barrie, “The Railways of South Wales”, in Railway Magazine, page 161:

     Train journeys were not long in terms of distance, and having regard to these factors, the tank engine inevitably preponderated. [...] Among tank engines, the 0-6-2 wheel arrangement was by far the most numerous, there being nearly 450 of this arrangement, which offers the advantage of good power and adhesive weight, coupled with adequate tank and bunker capacity, within a limited compass.

   • 1952, Cuthbert Hamilton Ellis, The Beauty of Old Trains, page 117:

     The 2-4-2 tank engines of the Great Eastern and the London and North Western were simply adaptations of 2-4-0 main-line engines; the 0-4-4 tank engine owed its parentage to the archaic 0-4-2 mixed traffic.

Synonyms

• tank locomotive

Related terms

• tender engine

Translations

type of steam locomotive

• Czech: tendrová lokomotiva f
• Finnish: tankkiveturi
• German: Tenderlokomotive f
• Irish: inneall umair m
• Polish: tendrzak
• Portuguese: locomotiva-tênder f
• Swedish: tanklok (sv) n

References

• “tank engine”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.