June 16, 2026 - M.T.H. Electric Trains will be releasing a die-cast Auxiliary Water Tender in both Premier O Scale and RailKing O Gauge models this coming winter. Both RailKing and Premier models will be offered in complementing paint schemes that match the previously announced 2026 Big Boy Steam Locomotives arriving in late 2026. All will be extremely limited in quantity and begin shipping to M.T.H. Authorized Retailers in December 2026.
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ABOUT THE AUXILIARY WATER TENDER
Like the mythological Phoenix, these former steam tenders have escaped the scrapper’s torch and risen from the dead — not once, but three times. They were built in 1937 and assigned to the Union Pacific Railroad’s first group of 800-series Northerns, Class FEF-1. While their locomotives were retired and scrapped in the late 1950s, these tenders spent just a few months in retirement before receiving a new assignment.
With a bright new Armour Yellow paint job, they became 24,000-gallon oil tenders for the most powerful single engines ever to run on American rails: the UP’s 8,500 horsepower General Electric GTELs (gas turbine electrics, also known as “Big Blows”). Since the turbines drank Bunker C fuel oil, a thick byproduct of petroleum distillation, the tenders were insulated and equipped with steam heating coils to make the fuel warm enough to flow to the engine. When the decade of the 1960s ended, and the turbine program as well, the tenders survived again while their second set of engines went to scrap.
The tenders were nearly forgotten for almost two decades, until the crew from the UP’s Heritage Steam Fleet discovered these tenders and four of their brethren on a disconnected piece of track in Los Angeles in 1988. The six tenders had been piped together to make a large, stationary diesel fuel storage tank. But the “Steam Team” had a problem, and the tenders were the solution.
Check out this unique offering in the scrolling list at the bottom of the page.
