My youngest son (age 4) bought me an Atlas N scale freight car this weekend with his allowance money.
It is a beer can shorty tank car, marked GATX 86585 with the slogan "For goodness sake eat more honey"
I cannot read the build date. It looks like '67 to me, to my wife it looks like '47
I was just curious what would such a car be used for. I assume it transported honey, but what sort of industries would be receiving such large quantities of honey by rail. Would it go to bakeries, breweries, chocolate factories and the like? Or would it tranport honey collected in one region to a bottler in another area?
Shorty tank cars normally carried acids (sulphuric acid), liquid sulphur or very heavy liquids such as gasoline anti-knock compound (lead tetra-ethyl).
The honey scheme is probably just an imaginary one.
Assuming you don't want to repaint it, I would have it serve a bakery or food processing plant.
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
I recall, I think, that some of Athearn's new HO "beer can" tank cars are lettered for corn syrup service. That certainly approximates honey as a shipped substance. I agree, that's a LOTTA honey. Sounds like a fun car to have around.
Ed
I couldn't find that road number here: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=GATX&Page=47 but it may be an actual prototype. Atlas has at least 2 numbers of the "Eat Honey" cars.
Rotor
Jake: How often does the train go by? Elwood: So often you won't even notice ...
Thanks.
Yes it is a fun car. Since my son is 4, his consists comprise of his favourite cars from my collection. So he runs a CN Mikado with a white 1970s CN mechanical reefer, the new honey car, a red GN 50' cattle car, a 1930s shell tank car, and a Lime green BC rail Box car with no roof walk and with a bright yellow CP bay window caboose.
Very fesitve.
AEF251 wrote: Thanks.Yes it is a fun car. Since my son is 4, his consists comprise of his favourite cars from my collection. So he runs a CN Mikado with a white 1970s CN mechanical reefer, the new honey car, a red GN 50' cattle car, a 1930s shell tank car, and a Lime green BC rail Box car with no roof walk and with a bright yellow CP bay window caboose.Very fesitve.
Sounds like the kind of train sometimes parked at a tourist line. The purist winces - then smiles behind his hand when Daddy (who isn't old enough to remember when Amtrak wasn't a synonym for intercity passenger rail) tells Junior, "That's what freight trains used to look like."
Tune in later to discover if your son becomes a purist. For now, if he enjoys his train, it's good.
Chuck (who became a purist at age 8 - in 1945 - and now models Central Japan in September, 1964)
I finally found it in the Atlas N "new announcements" under Atlas Trainman.
I don't know if it is a model of an actual car, but I don't see any reason why it couldn't be a real car...there's nothing that stands out as being phoney. The other cars in the run (BASF Wyandotte, Hooker Chemicals etc.) are real companies. Circa 1967 Great Northern had a cartoon "Rocky the Goat" pointing to lettering on GN Boxcars, the Susquehanna had a mini-skirted cartoon "Suzie Q" in a railroad cap on their cars. Northern Pacific had a cartoon pig wearing a crown in NP's "Pig Palace" stock cars. No reason a little art work re the honey being hauled would be out of place.
I would try getting out the magnifying glass and reading all the small lettering on it. GATX leases tank cars out to companies, somewhere on the car I bet it says who it is leased to.
BTW it probably would be used to send honey to a baking, cereal or candy company, that either makes honey-flavored products (like "Bit O Honey" candy) or uses the honey as a sweetener in some other product. (Don't know if it was common then, but I hear radio ads fairly often here in MN for 'honey bock beer' during Twins games.)
I found a photo of the prototype several years ago but cannot find it again despite many searches including combinations of Atlas, N scale, "for goodness sake EAT HONEY", GATX 86581, 86585, beer can tank car, shorty tank car, etc. I would insert a copy of the photo from my hard drive, but this site apparently only wants thing from a "Source", and I can't convince it to let me paste the photo. The photo is of road number 86585; Atlas nailed the graphics. Who knows if there really is another one (86581) or the three that would fill that series. Road number 86581 is Atlas number 31404A, and 86585 is Atlas number is 31405A.
John McCarthyI would insert a copy of the photo from my hard drive, but this site apparently only wants thing from a "Source"
I have to chuckle a bit at the idea of tank cars full of honey. The same people probably think those Pilot tank trucks are actually full of coffee...
The Dixie company (cf. the Lionel cars) is a honey and corn syrup producer. You can probably guess which they'd be shipping in tank loads...
But the story is actually more interesting: the campaign was for billboard advertising -- see the American Bee Journal (c106n5,1966) which featured Bell's version of the story.
Reference source from here
https://books.google.com/books/about/Economics_of_Sweetener_Marketing.html?id=cHuxoqUKDRUC
Google books has an excerpt from a US Agricultural Research Services book or pamphlet about honey. It points out honey is used in food (honey wheat crackers), baking and confection, candies, cereals, soft drinks and some beers. (Nowadays you even read of honey in cosmetics, shampoos, soaps. And don't forget honey mustard salad dressing (my fave). At liquor stores one now sees mead being sold - a Middle Ages drink.)
It then talks about promotion efforts by the bee/honey industry to increase the per capita consumption of honey. To quote the brochure: "One producer's tank trucks and railcars carry the slogan "For goodness' sake eat honey." No name is given. Given the quantities that large food manufacturers would need, I find shipping honey by tank car or truck very plausible. So the destination would be food or drink related, but also perhaps soap or cosmetics or shampoos.
Dave Nelson
dknelsonGiven the quantities that large food manufacturers would need, I find shipping honey by tank car or truck very plausible.
It does turn out that some honey IS shipped in bulk by rail; I have a reference by the Honey-Butter Company circa 1974 that indicates just about what you might think: to ship effectively requires special sanitary facilities and equipment, plus steam and compressed air -- time to empty a carload is given as ~10 hours. (They mentioned that their net cost of rail shipping, given the right equipment, was about 5% less than truck... and that the additional cost would make their operation incomprtitive...
I think it may be more likely for all except the largest-scale bakers, etc. to take delivery in boxes, containing sterilized jars or larger containers (I've seen it in large glass carboy-type containers and even lined cans.) Comb and jar honey was being successfully shipped transcontinentally from California, at a cost yielding competitive price in 'the East', before 1882. Presumably this was shipped inside boxcars or presumably reefers in hot season (you shouldn't need to 'refrigerate' it, but you wouldn't let it heat in a closed car in the sun)
This leaves the question whether either dried honey or some percentage would be mixed to 'flavor' a more industrial sweetener, and that transported in a tank.
It would be interesting to see what constituents of the mead process would be amenable to rail shipping if mass-brewed, as wort or some other constituents of beer could be... might make for some interesting slogans and logos and advertising, too
One thing you are going to need at the terminal is a steam connection to heating coils in the tank to make the honey liquid enough to flow. Such coils are a common fitting on many tank cars
BEAUSABREOne thing you are going to need at the terminal is a steam connection to heating coils in the tank to make the honey liquid enough to flow.
That is the likely reason that both steam and compressed air were called out as requirements. This would likely be process steam at relatively low pressure and temperature, hence the desirability of relatively cheap compressed air to move the product out of the car once its effective viscosity was reduced by heating. Condensate would tend to dilute the honey, and as noted it would be more efficient to circulate steam in closed coils solely for heating than to try to use it for pressure.
Shafty... now and then on train lists I saw tank cars of honey for Miller Honey in Colton, CA. It came down from Montana. Since it was all handled out in Colton, I never did see any of the tank cars.
That is almost certainly this operation:
https://www.millerhoneyfarms.com/
Note that their Gackle operations alone are said to source over a million pounds of honey a year.
They point out there is a Facebook page and other resources: this would be a highly likely source for information and pictures of the tank cars themselves plus the equipment used to fill/empty and service them.