I finally got my Santa Fe water tank and Poage water column in place after fussing with them over the summer. The tank, which is basically a piece of 6" ABS drain pipe, is based on a standard ATSF 24' x 43' design (a common size; some were smaller and others were as big as 40' x 60'). Some tanks sat on a concrete foundation pads, while others sat on foundations of crushed rock or slag like the surviving tank at Sedalia CO, which was built in 1906 and is 24' x 43' with a capacity of 140,000 gallon. Here's a link to a site that lists surviving tanks (as of 9/2024) and includes links to some photos --- http://atsf.railfan.net/tanks/
The water column is an American Scale Models brass model from Bill Davis that I painted black with ATSF-style white band. The pump house is not based on a specific prototype. The strip of numbers is set in a channel that also serves as a guide for the indicator that could move up and down on the real thing. On some tanks, this indicator was guided by two steel wires that stretched from the top to the bottom of the tank, one on each side. I decided that would be too delicate to model.
Pecos River Brass imported an O-scale model of a Santa Fe water tank, but it scales out to only about 16' in diameter, and there weren't many tanks of this size. I wanted something bigger and more typical, without being overwhelming (like a 40' x 60' tank would be). The similar ATSF-designed oil tanks were all considerably smaller.
The Santa Fe herald was adapted from an old-style herald on a 1903 timetable and the numbers on the water gauge were printed from an Apple "Pages" typeface called "Stencil" using line spacing and point size that made the numbers exactly 1/4" apart (10 point Stencil, 1.5 line spacing). I printed the herald and the strip of numbers on very thin white paper and attached them with spray adhesive because I couldn't find the proper decal for the herald in the size I wanted, and I didn't want to try to use individual decals to place all those numbers in the water gauge exactly 1 scale foot apart.
It's just a "representation" of a typical Santa Fe installation, but I'm happy with the way it looks on the layout. I forgot to swing the spout all the way back over the base and to set the switch stand in place before I took the picture. There's a Sunset 2-10-4 down the line to the right that's been waiting patiently for several years to take on water.