Railcraft Tank

Railcraft tanks are available the moment you can make iron parts. They are an excellent steam buffer early on.

You can also build them with the Assembling Machine once you get one.

Type	Size per Block	Max Size
Iron	16 buckets	10,308 buckets
Steel	32 buckets	20,736 buckets
Aluminum	64 buckets	41,472 buckets
Stainless Steel	128 buckets	82,944 buckets
Titanium	256 buckets	165,888 buckets
Tungstensteel	512 buckets	331,776 buckets
Palladium	1024 buckets	663,552 buckets
Iridium	1534 buckets
Osmium	2048 buckets	1,327,104 buckets
Neutronium	3072 buckets

The size doesn't double each time because of an internal limit on the integer type used by Java.

The edges of the tank MUST be tank walls. You cannot mix the material types. The bottom of the tank MUST be square, and an odd number (3x3, 9x9, etc). The tank can be between 4 and 8 blocks high.

Any valve placed in the bottom layer will output down at 1 bucket per tic (1000L/t). The valve must be in the bottom two layers if you want it to output, but valves that are not on the bottom-most layer will not auto-output. You can input from valves anywhere else including the second to bottom layer.

The cheapest maximum size tank of any given material will have the edges be tank walls, everything else be tank gauges except the input and output valves. For a 9x8x9 tank, you need 88 walls, 264 gauges, and 2 valves.