Tank Cars

[R.K. Maroon]

It appears that our ongoing tank car thread was among those lost in the forum wipeout earlier this year. I hope no one minds if I restart it.

I picked this guy up at O Scale West earlier this year:





I saw it sitting on one of the sales tables but didn't recognize it as something I had seen before. It was a heavy old car in nice enough shape, but the asking price was a bit high and I wasn't sure I wanted to haul it home, so I passed on it. Sometime later Charlie Morrill caught up with me and asked me if I had seen that "cool old tank car". So I went back to look at it with Charlie, thinking he was interested. The more we looked at it the more appealing it became, but to my surprise Charlie wasn't interested -- but he was pretty sure I needed to be. Well, he was correct, and I managed to talk the seller down to a reasonable amount ($20 I think).

Here's the underside:



I have exhausted all my catalogs and I still don't know what it is. The tank is a metal tube and the end frames are cast bronze. Walthers used cast bronze on their very early freight car frames and offered a metal tank option in at least one catalog (1936), but I don't have any other evidence to match this one with any certainty to an early Walthers.

At any rate, Charlie was right: Cool old tank car.

Thanks, Charlie!
Jim

[E7]

Interesting looking domes.....never seen any quite like them before. My first tank car was a Lionel "Sunoco" 2 domer received when I was a lad of about 3. These days I like the PSC 10,000 gallon single dome version. They have proportions I find pleasing......but I wouldn't turn down something else!

Rich

[aww]

Looks like a nice tank car.

For some not logical reason I have not got into tank cars. I have a NJCB hot tar car, the big one, where nobody knows if it's silver or black. I'm going with black.

A long time ago I worked for a while at an American Car & Foundry plant in Albuquerque NM. They had a picture in the office of a huge tank car with workers sitting all over it. It was built there I think. I wonder if that car was one of these?

Allan

[bob turner]

Me likes tank cars.

[E7]

For some not logical reason I have not got into tank cars. I have a NJCB hot tar car, the big one, where nobody knows if it's silver or black. I'm going with black.

A long time ago I worked for a while at an American Car & Foundry plant in Albuquerque NM. They had a picture in the office of a huge tank car with workers sitting all over it. It was built there I think. I wonder if that car was one of these? Allan

Allan, There was a nice article on those cars in the late "O Scale News" that had some comments from a gent employed at the Aliquippa works. He said he never saw any other color but black, though he did comment that any paint would have quickly burned off because of the high temps encountered at the steel mill. I am pretty sure they talked about where the cars were manufactured, but my copy of the mag is not handy for the purpose of checking, so I am shooting from the hip, but it seems to me that Sharon, Pa was mentioned as the origin of the cars.

Rich

[bob turner]

Oh, are you guys in for it. I have not spotted my J&L cars on pHotobucket, so endure these - brass, with cast brass end/bolsters, and Auel trucks. Beautiful cars, no idea of theirprovenance:

[bob turner]

Stock Thomas:

[bob turner]

One of my favorites -Lobaugh, with Walthers decals:

[E7]

Oh, are you guys in for it.

I like the one top image at left......has nice proportions.

Rich

[CMorrill]

Always glad to help somebody else spend their money Jim!

Here is a 1960s vintage Lionel tank with a new underframe.

Charlie

[Yves]

That Lionel tank car is beautiful Charlie, and so realistic.

Yves

[CMorrill]

Thanks Yves. That car was done long ago when I was a lot more patient with kit bashing and O scale tank cars were much harder to find. The Shell car in the background of the photo is a RC kit with a riveted wrapper (before decal rivets).

Gene Deimling in one of his recent blog series went into great detail on bashing a Lionel single dome tank to build a beautifully detailed Shell tank car.

Charlie

[Nortonville Phil]

Here are a few photos I took last year of some tank cars on display in Denison TX.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73303708@N08/17208218200/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73303708@N08/17188342207/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73303708@N08/17393806212/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73303708@N08/17208206080/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73303708@N08/17209565629/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73303708@N08/17393795052/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/73303708@N08/17395776285/in/dateposted-public/

[bob turner]

I took the tour. Nice layout. Looks like a Henry Pearce 0-8-0 in there.

I started to move stuff to Flickr, but then discovered that it no longer comes up on the TV.

[R.K. Maroon]

Great photos, Phil -- one of those tank cars looks so beat up it makes my old Walthers tank cars look realistic:



Well, ok, maybe not.

It took me a while to figure out what layout and 0-8-0 Bob was talking about. If you click on one of the links posted by Phil, and then arrow to the right you will eventually get to some layout photos. That is our DFW O-scale club set up in the Allen Texas depot earlier this year. According to the markings on the boiler, the 0-8-0 is a Hines. The Hines line was acquired at some point by Pearce Tool (the major creditor, I believe):



I wish everybody would mark their models with make, build-date, and modeler.

Jim