What is This?

[Greg Hile]

Can anyone help identify this? It would have been used to haul water to and/or from a bottling plant at some point in the early 20th century.

I am also trying to identify the lettering on the Southern Pacific car in the other photo. It looks to me to be SP 55736 or something like that but I can't quite make it out.

Thanks!

[Ray Dunakin]

Looks to me like it could be a street sprinkler wagon, such as this one:

http://www.raydunakin.com/Site/Street_Sprinkler_Wagon.html

[Greg Hile]

Wow, I hadn't thought of that but it does make sense. Being just down the street from the bottling plant, I just assumed it was some kind of horse-drawn cart from the plant. Thanks for the assist and the photos. I'll check it out further ...

[greenie]

Definitely a Water Waggon, try searching for a company called Studebaker, as they produced quite a lot of this particular type of horse drawn vehicle. Most were used for keeping the dust down on a dirt street.

[Greg Hile]

Cool, thanks! I think I will try my hand at building one, one of these days ...

[greenie]

Have a look thru this booklet, pages 39, 53 and 119 will be of interest to you.

Save this booklet too, as it's in PDF format.

https://archive.org/stream/illustratedsouve00stud?ref=ol#page/n0/mode/2up

[Greg Hile]

Thanks! Really cool! I've really got to spend more time with the LOC and other digital collections. My problem is, if I dive into them, I'm not sure I'd ever come back out.

I love the wagons and the automobiles of that era, which was a major reason why I chose to model that transitional period, where I could sort of blend them together.