More boring tank cars, please!

Alan P...Take a look at the RMT Classic 64 Series tank cars that are in stock now only at RMT.

 

www.readymadetoys.com

 

Thanks.

 

Walter M. Matuch/RMT

Alan,

 

I'm with you, bring on the GATX & UTLX which are long overdue.

 

Joe

 

I'm with you guys!  It was my intention to put together a modern tank train when I got into this hobby, but abandoned that goal.  Completely due to lack of current (boring) tank cars.

 

I hope someone makes them at some point, but I think they will have to be more than $40.  I don't believe any manufacturer can make passable rolling stock for $30-$40

I'm not a fan of the modern tank car. Kind of a"snoozer" 

Ha. Chris L, I think you may be in the majority, which is why the items we're looking for aren't available. I'd just like to see one of the train makers test the waters. Honestly, call it the Boring Tank Car Collection and see what happens!

 

Mr. Matuch, thanks for your reply. I have one of the old K-Line Union 76 cars and I'd like one of those Texacos to run behind steam engines. But my main interest is the 60s-80s trains I saw as a kid, which means welded frameless tank cars. Different strokes...

Why not just buy on the cheap and repaint? A couple rattle cans and some decals or dry transfers and you have what you are looking for. I only have space for Rail King, and I got tired of waiting for plain old boxcars in the roadnames I wanted - so I made my own. I'm up to about a 25 car fleet of boxcars now, and I've got a whole new avenue of the hobby I greatly enjoy. I'm not an artist (in fact...I was terrible at anything art related growing up) but it's a skill I continue to grow in, and well worth the time if its something you really want on your layout. 

We ought to have a "plain Jane" freight car thread sometime just to set the majority's teeth on edge....

Every so often Weaver makes a tank car that is a possibility, and they are less expensive than Atlas. These UTLX 40 foot tank cars (below) came out about two years ago, and I like them.





I ordered some 50 foot Procor cars through Bob Thatcher, but since Bob had to sell his business, I think I may have to follow up with Weaver on my order.

Have you ever seen the Weaver Models tank cars?

 

They are like what you are describing.

 

 

Weaver 40' tank car

 

 

 

Weaver PROCOR 50' tank car

 

http://www.weavermodels.com/page16.html

 

click on it

 

Andrew

Thanks for the pics, guys. I do like the Weaver cars but as noted, they can be hard to hunt down, and I like to look at the products in person, especially when the images on line are often doctored. Rich's UTLX cars look great.

 

Scott, I just about feel like I can paint buildings and scenery, not sure about the trains themselves! Especially when modern factory lettering is so sharp, I feel like anything I decal will stick out. I guess I could just put graffiti over my mistakes, for a truly accurate modern look.

You have to order a large number of tank cars directly from Weaver to get the desired result.

 

 

ACFX from Microscale

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=48-102&Category_Code=ACFX&Product_Count=10

 

GATX from Microscale

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=48-255&Category_Code=GATX&Product_Count=17

 

 

I've been picking up the Lionel unibody tanks whenever I see them around $20 with repainting in mind. Guys who are more into the toy aspect of 3 rail may like all that bright and busy stuff, but that just isn't what's riding the rails these days.

The Eaglebrook EAGX tank car was made in the K-Line by Lionel series several years ago.

 

 

Andrew

 

Thanks Andrew, I'll have to look for one of those. It might need a little weathering. That picture was taken at Rochelle, Il. When I grabbed that picture to post it, I was only seeing it as a thumbnail. I didn't realize there were any graphics on it.

Atlas has made some nice plain black 17k gallon tankers and plain grey and plain white funnel flow tankers as well plain black and plain white 33k tankers. Mixing a string of these into the consist makes for a realistic look on a modern freight. I would also like to see more plain white or grey hoppers and more plain brown high cube and 60 foot boxcars.

We need the 25,000 gallon tank cars in a bad way- those would be the best choice for modern day railroading for sure

 

Here's one from Atlas in N scale- very sweet-

 

 

I hear what your saying...

 

 

Buy Ed Kaminski's book about AC&F's tank cars. Excellent resource. Atlas O's Master Line included some really good models of 8,000 gal general purpose tank cars, as well as 11,000 gal pressure cars for liquefied petroleum gas, vinyl chloride monomer, and anhydrous ammonia. The yellow Shell Oil and Richfield cars are nice, too. Both of these were painted and lettered as the companies specified. Special lettering was called "principal lettering", and it and special paint colors were done at extra cost to the buyer or lessee.

 

Phil

Retired sales mgr, Shippers Car Line Div., ACF Industries, Inc. 1965-1997

 

 

Thanks, Phil - great to have an expert on board.

 

"Batch" custom painting is an interesting idea, like if Peterson or AM Hobbies got people to commit to enough (say) 4-packs, they'd do a custom run. For my small layout I'd want to mix-and-match, others might want a solid block of four or eight.

 

MTH is doing something like this, selling 3-packs of Railking modern cars, but with oil company decoration that seems too flashy for my boring taste, ha!

It might be worth contacting Jeff at A&M about a custom run of "boring" tank cars. Jeff has shown interest in offering other custom run products of interest to modern era modelers.

Here's another "boring" tank car. This is an MTH funnel flow car essentially converted to two rail and weathered:



Here is one of the Atlas 33K tank cars someone mentioned above. These are a 60s-era design and a little dated for today's operations, but work for my early 90s ATSF freights:


And just for fun, here's a BNSF manifest with its share of boring cars:

 

Nothin boring about that, Rich! Reminds me of riding the Empire Builder with Mom and Dad in '86, and driving to Cali in an old Pontiac with friends in '95. Cool stuff for a New England kid!

Anthony K:  When I fell from the fold in my teen years and wandered off into the world of HO, one of the reasons was all the plain jane box car red 40 foot boxcars

that looked like what rolled past my hood ornament at the crossing gates available

in kits in that scale.  Those steam era cars from obscure "fallen flags" are what I

like, but except for the small white "initials" on the car,  pretty much all looked alike.  From what it sounds like on here, most model a later era, so I don't expect

to see factory cars as just described.

 

The late steam era could use these as well.  I understand that like reefers the more colorful tanks have individual visual appeal.  However the basic fleet color schemes on both reefers and tanks were more common and offer greater operational flexibility.

Most tank cars were painted black - to paraphrase Henry Ford, 'any color you want as long as it's black'. Exceptions occurred according to a customer's wishes, and subject to ICC/DOT/FRA regulations, but such regulations generally covered only the required technical data and the size of that lettering. No principal lettering could displace or interfere with mandated lettering (reporting marks, other technical data). Black is the usual color now; commodity spillage isn't as visible on a black car as it would be on a car of a lighter color. "Funnel Flow" tank cars were usually 111A100W1 type and the name was a trademark of Union Tank Car Co. based on the car's slope bottom. ACF used what was called a "scalene cone" design, where the car had a slope bottom (typically 1/4 inch to the linear foot) and a horizontal tank top versus looking like it had a broken back. The ACF car was more costly to manufacture; the company promoted the horizontal top design as safer than a sloped top if a man should walk on it, but in the long run the scalene cone design succumbed to cost considerations. Today all tank cars are required to have dome safety platforms, but this wasn't a requirement many years ago (it was an option).

I like to think of these as "sinister black tank cars", as in you don't know what they're carrying and probably don't want to find out . I've been buying a few here and there.

While there are 8000-gallon tankers in 'O', I'd like to see something like this:

...while I wonder what sort of commodities were carried in it. I know they're not very commonplace, but they'd be perfect for a six-pack (pun intended). I'm pretty sure the MTH 8000-gallon cars are modeled after a different prototype.

---PCJ

FYI- A copy of the Emergency Response Guidebook will help you identify what material is being transported by looking at the haz mat placards. The ERG placard templates can be reduced to O-scale for added realism on our tank cars.  I believe there was a series of articles in O Scale Trains this past year about modeling Haz Mat loads in modern railroading.

 

Given the abscence of placards, this car is either empty or transporting a non-regulated material.

 

 

FYI I did a comparison of Weavers 40 ft. tank cars & Mth's RailKing modern cars. There is a ever so slight (maybe a 1/8 of a inch coupler to coupler) difference in length with the Weaver one being longer. Also the Weaver tank body is more rounder than the MTH one but still is very close in size. Comparison of the 50 ft. Weaver & K-Line undecorated cars yields the same difference. Both are excellent looking but I tend to favor the Weaver model more. Hope this helps someone. Happy Holidays to all.

 

 

          Joe

Almost Every Stinking Tank Car I SEE  in real life is BLACK!! I just do not understand the manufacture not doing a six back of 8000 gal tank cars. I see film after film of Union Tank Cars running since WW2 now the bigger ones hauling ethanol mostly all black, does anyone else Want a six pack of all black?

Real tank cars I photographed in the past year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most are basic in colors and graphics.

 

Andrew

Thanks for the pics, Andrew. I didn't know that there really are yellow Safety-Kleen cars. I think Weaver has made those in the past.

Weaver Models made a version of the Safety-Kleen Tank Cars first as a special run, then K-Line offered a long version of the Safety-Kleen tank car, and MTH produced a pair with different reporting marks & roadnumbers.

 

Andrew

I like the old single-and-two-dome tankers of the WWII era and later.  Lionel's

Cities Service and the ubiquitous Sunoco come to mind.

 

     Hoppy

I know these would not be modern, but I noticed on the Atlas O website that in the latest run of teh 8K tank cars, they list an SHPX, but do not show a picture. Maybe Atlas thinks these even too boring to show what one looks like! Either way, i may have to eventually pick up one or two of these, since they would have operated into the 50s, which is what I like to model.

I hope you are going to buy the new Lionel 30,000 Gallon Tank Car 3-Packs.

The UTLX and ACFX schemes are as plain as possible.

 

Andrew

I've been buying some 'abused' Weaver cars and reworking them into 'plain jane' cars....

Dave, 

That make you sound like your running a Tank Car rescue!