Railroad Device - Track Tray

I was listening to a documentary about trains and heard about a device I hadn't known about. This device is called a track tray. Throughout much of the golden age of rail, the glamour route was the New York to Chicago run. In order to make the trip, a steam engine needed to be fed two things, fuel and water. The volumes of water were prodigious, and according to the documentary, the water needed to be refilled about every 50 miles. In order to be able to refill the water supply, the trains, running at speed, could drop an intake nozzle. This would scoop up the water, and using its inertia, drive it up into the water tank. The system wasted a lot of water, but it kept the trains from having to slow. The trays were apparently about 2 feet wide and guessing from the nozzle picture I saw, perhaps five inches deep. The documentary said the track trays could be a half-mile long. That's a LOT of water!