I have a modest (260') coastal tanker ship, and the dock is under construction in an area where it would unload petroleum products for rail transport. Also the space is alloted for the (up to 300' long) tank car loading racks I'm having a hard time fitting sizable tanks in the erea. Were there ever facilities that pumped directly from the ship to tank cars? And skip the tanks, save for maybe a local distributor by truck. Maybe. I know it's my layout and all that, but it would be nice to know if the practice had a prototype.
Could even be something specialized like fertilizers or other chemicals, but petroleum products seem likely, and finished product at that, as there are no refineries in the erea. And certainly no room to even suggest one on my layout. South Oregon coast is the general locale if that helps as far as a logical product being transfered.
So, again the main question, is direct ship-to-tank prototypical or at least believable? Dan.
The classic answer is "There is a protype for everything". I do think it would be more likely to be ship to tank farm to tanker cars. You could simulate the tank farm by painting it on the back drop. Also, get pictures of prototype piping layouts to connect ship to shore and tank farm to loading racks. On a club I once belonged to, we had a riverside scene with a tanker barge tied up at pierside and the builder had studied prototype layouts and built a convincing scene
I think you should at least "hint" at a distant tank farm.
Oil and Fuel Tanks Adjacent to the John F. Kennedy Airport 05/1973 by The U.S. National Archives, on Flickr
Holding up a ship while filling tank cars (what if the ship is late or there aren't enough tank cars immediately available) wouldn't be economically viable.
Weather it's ore, coal, limestone, etc. there was always a way to quickly unload the ship so it could get on its way for another consignment.
Oil tank farm, East Boston by Boston Public Library, on Flickr
Good Luck, Ed
I'm strongly inclined to agree with both replies so far. I was hoping, wishful thinking, for an exception but a realistic one. I'm not a fan of cramming industries, but this ship scene is already fairly crammed, even without the ship in it. I think I may eliminate the ship, (just build it as the separate model it is, off the layout) and free up the space for something that wouldn't require as much space. Tanks painted on the backdrop are a great idea, except it is 3-D embankments already.
I may not have to abandon the tank farm idea. Perhaps put a small one where the ship would have gone, and make it a rail to tank, and local truck distribition. An overall smaller operation, but with breathing room. That appeals more than cramming. It would certainly make the layout arrangement more balanced visually. Thanks for the replies! Dan
Lastspikemike That is a very small tanker at 260'. Very small. It would not unload at a large tank farm facility, there'd be no point to that. Maybe a few tanks? Your model would be more of a local delivery tanker and could feasibly model several part cargo deliveries so you'd not need a big tank farm nor a long tank car train. Your unloading facility could represent just one stop on its route and credibly model a direct unload to a short tank car train for local distribution. Or, if full load/unload modelling is desired then to match this size to prototype unloading facilities ...
That is a very small tanker at 260'. Very small. It would not unload at a large tank farm facility, there'd be no point to that. Maybe a few tanks?
Your model would be more of a local delivery tanker and could feasibly model several part cargo deliveries so you'd not need a big tank farm nor a long tank car train. Your unloading facility could represent just one stop on its route and credibly model a direct unload to a short tank car train for local distribution.
Or, if full load/unload modelling is desired then to match this size to prototype unloading facilities ...
Goog input, Mike. The above quote was what I was originally shooting for, but even that would be crammed, and I don't want any visual cramming. We already have to selectivly compress a lot as it is.
Something I thought of is to model the facility, but with the ship itself just not there at the time, right?
Most if not all tankers I've ever seen don't dock up parallel to a pier like a dry freighter, but have facilities thet extend out to kind of a platform anyway.
Either way, this ship will not be docked as originally planned, and I'm rather enjoying being free to move ahead on a more reasonable scene. I even have a prototype in mind to pattern it after.
Thanks for the input! Dan
PS. I will still have a ship as a focal point, at the woodchip dock.
The odds of this ever occurring are vanishingly small.
You don't want the entire ship and crew tied up at your dock for days to unload it, so you'd have to have a huge mess of tank cars to load up ready and waiting as soon as it hits the dock, and enough loading rack space to keep a whole bunch of them loading. Even a small ship would translate to a lot of railcars, so you'd be cycling them through with a switcher as soon as they're filled to keep the operation going.
No, you'd definitely want to offload the ship into storage tanks and get it on its way ASAP and then fill railcars from the storage tanks as required.
The alternative is so crazy logistically that I'd venture no, there is NOT a "prototype for everything".
Thre are plenty of prototypes for a modest dock leading to just a couple of storage tanks for handling gasoline/diesel/fuel oil with a loading rack for a few tank cars at a time though.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
The other, more workable solution to consider is that the tanks needn't be "close" to the dock and/or loading racks at all... Pipelines can take the product to where there's actually space to build the farm. (This could even simply be represented on the backdrop for a model.)
Yup. The area the ship occupied has already been leveled up to ground level, and a decent size rail-tank-truck facility will be in the works soon.
LastspikemikeThat is a very small tanker at 260'.
Here's a protype for you, US Maritime Commission's T-1 class of coastal vessels
T1 tanker - Wikipedia
Mettawee (AOG-17) Class (shipscribe.com)
A bit bigger
Patapsco (AOG-1) Class (shipscribe.com)
For harbor service the Navy has YO's and YOG's. Here's a 154 foot example that was at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked
stacks_image_18.jpg (667×511) (dentonhistory.net)
Many of these vessels were sold for commercial use post war (appropriate for the Fifties and Sixties) and some still serve. Remove the guns, paint in civilian colors and there you are
Lastspikemike My railroad has a number of the smaller tank cars for which I have yet to develop a destination or point of origin. This thread is stimulating ideas.
My railroad has a number of the smaller tank cars for which I have yet to develop a destination or point of origin. This thread is stimulating ideas.
Ideas for me too. My new planned facility, a fuel supplier, will be smaller, need much fewer tank cars per given delivery than I have available.
The reason I can't paint a tank farm on the backdrop is here: The backdrop is this big 'ol embankment. The rest of the area would be too crammed for a ship related tank farm.
The upside is that now there is room for some buildings based on local 1/1 prototypes I like. And fueling racks for tank trucks, loading docks for barrels and such onto various other trucks, all of which I have.
The surplus tank cars can be ran in mixed through freights easily enough.
Laying the ship idea to rest has renewed my enthusiasm for developing this whole area on the layout. Dan
I see your approach is a little different than mine. I like to build structures and let them dominate the scene even over the trains often. I've settled on dismissing the ship from the scene, and am playing around with tha arranging of the new ideas regarding structures and such. I posted pix in the weekend photo fun thread. I appreciate your ideas! A cutaway structure could be cool, but is more involved than I care to take on. Dan
Hello All,
Where I grew up in Long Beach, California, there were pipelines from the refineries tank farms to buoys located offshore for transferring crude oil from the ships.
Ships were moored to these unloading buoys for the transfer process from ship to shore.
These pipelines "surfaced" within the refinery facilities to fill the storage tanks. Then the crude oil was transferred from the tanks to the refinery via secondary pipelines.
Along the lines of selective compression, you could model a trackside loading facility with only the pipeline heads, valves, and transfer platform in the space you have either between the tracks or the depressed space and the adjacent track in your photo.
The tank farm would be "imagineered" from off the pike, from the left of the photo.
Just something to consider...
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
Sometimes oil products are shipped on barges from refineries to local storage/distribution tank farms. The barges have lots of piping on the deck.
A recent article on silk trains in the Milwaukee Road Historical Association's quarterly magazine had a picture of a tank car being loaded directly from a ship in that era. The ship wasn't a tanker, but a general freighter with storage tank(s). I forget the commodity, but it was something specialized that resulted in a few tank car loads every so often.
Not really what the OP was looking for, but it was direct ship to rail car.
Jeff
A very few ports had underground tanks.
Keep in mind that custody transfers of fuel often involve testing to make sure if still meets ASTM specifications. This may involve letting any debris settle out. The fuel would be held in a tank until the test results are known.
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
The 'silk era' being before the advent of OTR trucking, and likely also when rail transport to remote points was more assured than road transport would be.
Something not 'economically' transported in drums or cans, as Standard Oil lighting oil would have been, or in tank cars on barges or lighters, but not in enough volume to justify ground transfer tankage, while still being something economically carried in bulk by coastal shipping.
Jeff, if it happened even once, it becomes legitimate to model...
I did find the article. One picture shows direct ship to tank cars. Another one is captioned unloading from the ship but the piping passes through the warehouse on the pier.
The commodity was tung oil. Used for furniture and other uses, at the time it was a perishable commodity. At the time it had a limited shelf life. I don't have the article in front of me, I believe it would harden relatively quickly.) After WW2 chemical stabilizers were developed that extended the shelf life of the product.