I'm in the middle of building a brass Vanderbilt tender for my Seaboard 4-8-2. I just received an actual drawing of the tender used (courtesy of Dr. Ted Strickland and Ron Dettmer, thanks guys!), but it's very hard to read/see all the details:
What has me stumped is the front bulkhead, especially the access to the coal.
Looking at a photo, I can't determine what the front wall looks like. It appears there's wooden/steel slats that hold the coal inside the bunker, or maybe doors that swing open:
These engines were all hand-fired, so the fireman had to have access to shovel all that coal.
Looks like there's a round column, can't tell if that's a hinge or what, looks like a water/steam standpipe. I can't imagine there's doors that open outwards, would take up too much space and get in the way. Maybe it's a solid piece and there's a lift-up door at the bottom???
Just to the right of this column, there's a ladder up to where it starts to slope (drawing shows 2 handgrabs on the sloped surface).
The engineer's side has a hole in the vertical flat surface for a water cooler and instead of the sloped surface sloping towards the rear, the sloped surface is sloped from the side towards the center.
Anyway, give me your best guess!
