I'm interested in finding the car, but thought I would ask here first to clarify it. But when I was younger, my family was in 2-rail and they had a freight car that I haven't seen since we had it 15 to 20 years ago. It was a small size car like a PS-1 boxcar, but it was open but had pipes like for oxygen or hydrogen and was colored gray. Would love to refind it again and get back one of my favorite looking train cars I remember.
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I think Overland might have imported a similar Helium car.
Simon
DaveJfr0 posted:
Thank you Dave. That's the car right their!!! Thank You!!
Sunset may have done the same car.
There was a kit manufactured over fifty years ago. I have one, it is crude by today's standards but the for ten dollars that I got it for satisfies me. Note that the cylinders are straight tubes, not tapered at the ends like the prototype.
Edit: On closer examination, I am guessing that this is a scratch-built car. Any information on the builder would be appreciated.
Helium Car, neat car. Often seen on the UP, AT&SF and Rock Island; natural gas wells in an area encompassing the southwest of Kansas, the OK and Texas pan-handles have some of the highest percentages of naturally occurring Helium in the world making it more economically easy to recover for commercial and/or strategic use, the War Department and later DOD used these cars to ship the refracted liquefied gas to Naval Stations employing blimps etc. They were actually painted silver. Pecos River Brass had beautiful version of these cars.
Again, neat car, congratulations.
The drool-worthy 1940 Vandenboom catalog shows a kit for the Navy helium car, and for a quite different Army helium car, with much larger tanks. While this catalog doesn't show kitmaker, l think l have seen the Navy version as a Walthers kit. They are probably in moldy boxes in somebody's basement.
Plastruct has the parts to build the tubes with domed ends (perhaps flanges) and support saddles for in between. Sheet material and structural beams - also detail parts for the outside.
Find a donor boxcar and make one if it comes to that.
This is interesting
Here are some pictures I took last year of the Helium trucks that supply the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. I believe they are the largest private buyers of Helium in the US.
A little off topic but maybe interesting.
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