doctorwayneThat's a snazzy-lookin' paint job, Kevin. Nice work!!
Thank you. I have looked through my pictures for an image of the finished model, but I do not seem to have one.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Here is one of a number of blog posts about tank cars by tony Thompson.
http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/search?q=hooker+tank+car+modeling
Ron High
That's a snazzy-lookin' paint job, Kevin. Nice work!!
Wayne
Here is one I painted for my railroad that I gave away to a friend.
In-process photo.
I'm not a river counter, so I'm happy with my old tank cars, although admittedly most pale in comparison to my Walthers Type 21 cars, but what doesn't? I have a Hooker chemical car, used to deliver acid to the tannery, and an old non-descript tanker turned into a water MOW car.
All my cars have metal wheelsets, trucks as needed, and Kadee couplers. They perform well on the layout, and mostly, that's all I ask for.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I had a couple of Athearn tank cars from a previous layout, and when I decided to model GERN Industries (a creation dreamt-up by my brother many years ago), I decided that the Athearn cars would be suitable with a few added details and the factory lettering removed. While I do agree that they look a little unusual compared to much of the more recent models, they're good enough for use by GERN...in fact, I actually bought a few more, most from the "used" table at a now long-gone hobbyshop. They were there because of the Proto tank cars, which were more realistic in appearance and detail - more on those later.
My one Athearn "chemical" tank car got its lettering stripped and a few added details...metal grabirons, and sill steps, along with some brake gear, and some new lettering, a combination of decals and dry transfers...
(the sludge is not waste, but used in the production of other products)
My one regular Athearn tankcar, which seemed rather plain and misproportioned, got some additional modifications...
Getting more inspiration as I worked, and finding the cheap "used" cars, the GERN roster increased with another "chemical" tankcar...
...then another...
Originally, I never cared for the 3-dome version, but after seeing photos of older real cars of this type, I did buy one (used, of course) and in addition to the usual details, backdated it somewhat, in order to better-suit the late '30s era of my layout...
I later added some more realistic (aside from the GERN aspect of things) tankcars, using undecorated kits from Tangent...
...this one was the first-built of the three Tangent cars, and pre-dated the custom lettering used on the two cars above, so the lettering on this one was done with 168 pieces of decals, some merely the "." at the end of a short-form word.
Here's the Varney tank which Dave mentioned earlier, along with the kit parts for a Tichy tankcar underframe...
...the tank was free, at a local train show.
However, it was too long for the Tichy underframe...
In regards to my earlier remark concerning the Proto tank cars, I hadn't bought any due to the high prices (relative to the used Athearn stuff, at least) but I began to notice partially-built, or, even worse, mis-built Proto kits showing-up on the "used" table at that hobbyshop. Apparently, some modellers were having difficulties with the kits...mostly, it seemed, with the grabirons. I had looked at those new kits when they had first arrived, but the overly-fat plastic grabirons were one of the reasons (in addition to the price) that I hadn't bought any.The ones on the used table were definitely affordable, so I bought a couple and decided to see if they could be rescued.The first task was to remove all of the plastic grabirons and sill steps, then remove the excessive applications of ca used in attempts to install them. I used Evergreen styrene rod to plug all the holes, then stripped-off the factory paint and lettering.
Here are a couple of the re-done ones...
Not too much later, Proto began releasing the r-t-r versions of their tankcars, and, surprising to me, the hobbyshop put the kits on the used table at drastically reduced prices, something I'd never seen them do. I bought several, and most were built without removing the paint and lettering, but all got the revisions needed to replace the plastic grabirons and sill steps.
While I always liked Athearn's kits (and those of Model Die Casting and Train Miniature, too) many of those older kits can be modified to make them more realistic looking, and in some cases, fairly accurate renditions of real rolling stock.Here's a LINK to a thread showing ways to upgrade these older (and affordable) freight cars into decent renditions of real cars.
There are prior threads on these forums on this very topic with some very useful info and links posted.
To understand why Athearn blue box cars look like they do (and get the criticism from prototype modelers that they do), you have to put yourself in the shoes of a tool and die person working off of what they are provided for info back then. The main source was the various old Car Builder's Cyclopedias and often that where you can find the various old Athearn paint and lettering schemes (including often the very number) taken from. There were not always drawings of the freight cars pictured and often the drawings were reduced in size so much as to be almost unintelligible.
It is almost unbelievable how much more freight car information and photos are available to us now verses 50+ years ago. There were modelers who knew and had the data but they had no "outlet" for their information and analysis.
And Athearn (the man) was a penny pincher. My understanding is that the old single dome tank car was more or less their triple dome tank car with the two end domes removed, which accounts for the odd dome size. It resembles various cars in the Car Builder's Cyclopedias that they likely had available to them - meaning old and outdated issues - but isn't a dead ringer for any. And because they intended to put all manner of lettering and road names on them I think that "bit of this and bit of that" approach was intentional. I actually think the old Mantua tank car had more probable proportions between tank and dome but I have not taken a calipers or scale rule to it to verify. I think Dr Wayne has worked some miracles with the old Varney tank car body as well.
Some say the single dome tank car is a reasonable approximation of a Southern Pacific tank car (railroad owned tank cars being something of a rarity in themselves) but the dome is not right. If that is true it must have been a fairly high capacity tank car as the tank seems larger than 10,000 gallon capacity
The underframe is thought to be pretty accurate for GATX tank cars. And yes it has been used, including by some prototype modelers, as kitbash fodder under other tanks from other sources.
The chemical tank car has a rather bulky look to the platform and railings but some modelers point out that a true chemical tank would look different than the Athearn tank does. In other words the only thing chemical about is the platform and the words Athearn put on the box. But in general outline if you overlook various features it resembles prototype cars. And you know if you pay attention to details and do those things like replacing cast on grabs, replace the sill steps, that sort of stuff, and then do a nice job of weathering, the nit pickers will be slow to pounce, particularly if you keep the car moving.
Dave Nelson
I have never liked the appearance of the Athearn Blue Box "41 foot" tank cars, but I cannot tell you exactly what is not right about them.
That said, I do like the frames. They are easy to add grab irons and brake detail to, and I have used them under my 20,000 gallon J&L tank, and two Precision Scale brass tank cars that had damaged frames. A detailed Athearn tank car frame looks better than the frames that come with most brass models.
Almost all my tank cars, I do not have many, are brass. Really, this is more for durablility. The Kadee tank car is gorgeous, but it is so breakable.
I have probably a half-dozen old Lambert brass tank cars, and then 4 or 5 one-off models. All the SGRR tank cars (4 of them) are Proto-2000 kits.
This model is from Overland.
I have liked these well enough for years; after having gotten some P2K 8K and 10K tank cars, the athearn look clunky. Any idea if the athearn are properly scaled and just look 'horsey" compared to the smaller p2k cars, or do they need only some fine details, etc., to enhance their appearance/usefulness?