JWhite I assume what I need to do is determine which supplier this dealer was associated with and get Mobil, Esso or whichever cars? The majority of the privately owned cars were owned by companies like UTLX and GATX. The cars were not always marked with the logo of the company leasing them. Plain black cars marked for UTLX and GATX would have been very common.
I assume what I need to do is determine which supplier this dealer was associated with and get Mobil, Esso or whichever cars?
The majority of the privately owned cars were owned by companies like UTLX and GATX. The cars were not always marked with the logo of the company leasing them. Plain black cars marked for UTLX and GATX would have been very common.
Yes, that's it. A dealer would likely see many cars marked with the brand, many of which were owned by the private leasing companies as time wor one, just painted to suit the company leasing them. There would also be other, more anonymous cars from the private leasing company that would supplement them. Keep in mind that fuel is often affected by seasonal sales variations. Leased cars help fill out a fleet in busy times, while -- when they were common -- marked cars did get the marketing word out, you didn't want strings of them sitting MT in slow time.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Thanks for all the responses.
It seems like almost all of these were privately owned. I assume what I need to do is determine which supplier this dealer was associated with and get Mobil, Esso or whichever cars?
Would it be unusual for a dealer to receive shipments from different suppliers?
I have the right to remain silent. By posting here I have given up that right and accept that anything I say can and will be used as evidence to critique me.
Carl,
IIRC, tank cars with the ICC designation 103 were typical. Earlier, an AAR 111 designation was used, but I think that had been changed well before the 70s to the 103 spec cars. Basically both are for non-pressurized liquids.
By the way it has become commonplace to refer to the five-dome/five-compartment tank cars of the steam era as "wine cars" but not all of them were wine cars. The Railway Prototype Cyclopedia 10 has a photo of a five dome/5 compartment car with five 1000 gallon compartments for petroleum products.
Also some cars with what looked like multiple domes were really one compartment tank cars with multiple access hatches.
Dave Nelson
All of those tank cars was built in the 30s or 40s..
Interesting to see those wine cars.They look like they're out of a Tyco train set.
Thanks for sharing the link.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Here's a handful of nice builder's photos:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/sets/72157649155982802/
I often wondered about those "Winery" tank cars you sometimes see offered by model manufacturers but, sure enough, at the bottom of the page is a photo of Madera Wineries and Distilleries car!
Ed
By the 1970s the old center sill tank cars such as the old Athearn blue box kits were getting to be on their last legs, but were still around; the more modern cars without full center sills were getting to be dominant, as they remain today. Morning Sun has two excellent books on tanks cars by James Kinkaid that should provide lots of good information. I strongly recommend them to you and to anyone with an interest in tank cars and tank car modeling.
Depending on the size of the tanks at that local dealer, and depending on what petroleum based products they offered (eg, oil, kerosene, gasoline) they might well have gotten the multi dome, two or three compartment type tanks cars such as Athearn offered or offers, but most dealers had storage tanks large enough to receive the larger single compartment tank cars, although perhaps not the jumbo types. Actually not many of the jumbo cars hauled oil anyway, mostly chemicals.
I would want to use a three compartment tank car similar to the ones Tangent offers...
http://www.tangentscalemodels.com/general-american-6000-gal-3-comp-tank-car/
The oil dealer near me only had limited storage, no where near 6,000 to 10,000 gallons a single tank car might hold.
The multi compartment car could hold several oils in smaller quantities (2,000 gal. each compartment).
There is a very good article this month about these cars at the on-line magazine, MRH.
Good Luck, Ed
There was an oil dealer in Norton, VA. It's gone now, but I'm not sure when it met its demise. Assuming it was there until the early to mid-70's, what HO scale tank cars would be appropriate to serve this dealer?