I just watched several film clips of both BNSF and NS hauling tank cars. Behind the engines and ahead of the first tank car there was either a box car or a hopper car. What is the reason for this?
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It's a spacer car, to provide collision protection between the haz mat cars in the train and the engine. There should be one on the rear of the train as well.
Some National Fire Courses focus on tank cars. there are a number of safety items on these rail cars.
Bleves are very deadly.
I have a prototype question about tank cars. I like the less common, and have
gas stations for my layout for defunct oil companies that operated in 1940...Skelly, Frontier, and others (Frontier isn't defunct...had long left the retail business and just recently merged with Holly Petroleum), and also bulk oil plants for them, with Lionel and MTH tank cars for those companies to serve them. I was researching Frontier prototype reporting marks and could not find any listed for this company or any prototype tank car photos for it on the various photo sites (I want some plain tank cars..8000 gallon, black, etc., but now wonder if they existed with reporting marks for these companies, Frontier, especially) There are two white Lionel Skelly cars and a white modern MTH Frontier tank car...black tank cars with just reporting marks seem to be most prevalent in old refinery photos?
Many petroleum refiners and product marketers used tank cars from major leasing outfits. Leased cars were most often plain black, but could be painted and lettered for the lessor company. However they would carry the owner's reporting marks NATX, SHPX or UTLX (National Car Leasing, Shippers Car Line, Union Tank Line) and numbering.
Frontier (Holly) and Skelly may have leased their cars. Phillips Petroleum tank cars used reporting marks PSPX and SWLX in the 1940s and 50s. Likely subsidiary companies. Warren Petroleum, another Tulsa area producer, had WRNX. The Sun Oil Company (Sunoco) leased some gasoline tank cars from SHPX. Theywere plain-Jane black, 10M gallon single dome cars. I've not seen prototype photos of silver with Sunoco logoed single or twin dome tank cars such as Lionel popularized.
The refineries around Tulsa now mainly see SHPX and ULTX propane tank cars in plain black, some with rather garish graffitti as well.
Ed Bommer
