O Scale Freight Car Guide: Tank Cars

Popsrr,

Great collection of tank cars and layout scenery.

laz57,

You should post a photo. of your sleek train of tank cars, as in the past.

Nice tank cars, everyone.

Ted, as always, another great, informative and enjoyable thread.

Ralph 

Railking Diecast

Ray Marion

Thank you Ralph.

That looks great! Got a Railking part number? Is the entire tank metal?

Pops

Thank you for posting all the great tank car photos, especially the Tank Train cars.  They are some of the nicest O scale cars that Lionel has produced.

Ray

And thank you for posting the photo of your Railking 8000 gallon tank car.  The Kadee conversion is neat and highlights that the RailKing tank car deserves notice from the scale oriented folks in O.

Bob2

Ray's tank car is diecast.  It is a 30-8104.  The same type car is also made with a plastic tank and diecast underframe.

http://www.mthtrains.com/content/30-8104

Ted, as always, another great, informative and enjoyable thread.

Ralph

That is always nice to hear.  For me the most enjoyable parts of working on the O Scale Freight Car Guide are seeing all the great posts from you guys.  October is fast approaching and another installment is almost ready to go.  This one is a little different and will be even more dependent on audience participation than usual.  I'm looking forward to filling in some gaps in a particular area of O scale freight car knowledge with help from everyone in the forum and thinking of it as an internet era TCA research project.

Ted,

One additional note on Lionel's Standard O Unibody Tank Car. The add-on details (railing, platforms, etc.) were upgraded from plastic to metal in 2001.

Regards,

Todd

Todd

Thank you for the additional info.  That must be about the same time that Lionel came out with their new Standard O trucks.

Ray,

That, NYC tank is a beauty in photo. and especially in person.

Thank you,

Happy New Year,

Ralph

Ted,

The answer to your comment is both "yes" and "no." 2001 was the year that Lionel upgraded the details on the Unibody tank car AND the new-style "thumbtackless" trucks appeared, but they didn't start showing-up on the tank cars until after my tour of duty with the company.

I had originally considered upgrading some of the older generation Standard O cars to the new trucks, but decided against it in order to maintain some differentiation between the two "series" of Std. O cars -- not to mentioned all the tooling changes that would have been required to adapt the new trucks to the older-style frames.

Regards,

Todd

Update!

I have received the Lionel PROCOR 30,000 gallon tank cars.  They look nice but boy are they light! 

They register 13.3 ounces on my digital scale.  The only other O scale freight car I have that is of similar length and weighs less is a Weaver hopper with plastic trucks.

Ted;

The new ready to run San Juan Car Company tank cars are now available and they are fantastic....http://www.sanjuancarco.com/

Allan

I grew up seeing just plain old black 8K's....

I enjoy running tankers.  Here's my collection:

The new ready to run San Juan Car Company tank cars are now available and they are fantastic....http://www.sanjuancarco.com/

 

Allan

Thanks for the heads up. 

San Juan Car is now making a 2 rail ready to run tank car based an a pre-WW I prototype that would make an interesting addition to any steam era car fleet.

Superb stuff as always.  I like the Atlas tank cars and the weathering on the SW1 too.

MdMikey

Thanks for posting the photos.  You get extra credit for having the Hooker Niagara Falls car.

I grew up seeing just plain old black 8K's

Same here Steve.  Here's a GATX tankcar at Pinners Point (old ACL/Southern yard) here in Portsmouth:

Got a couple of questions:

1) When did they start using roller-bearing trucks on tank cars?  4 out of 6 of mine have roller-bearings but all the photos I've found only show solid-bearings.

2) Given the various sizes of our models, how can I measure them and determine the capacity of each of my 6 cars?  I have 3 tank cars I re-lettered for UTLX and I think I have the capacities wrong on them.

Would it be Volume=3.14159*Radius(squared)*Height/48?

Bob, two thoughts come to mind.

The modern tank cars have a double shell I believe? Might effect how much they can carry with measuring just the outside?

 Those bearings were outlawed, again I believe. The year might come up in a search or better yet, ask on the real trains forum.

 I think your questions really depend on the date your trying to represent. I get mad when they equip a modern tank car with the wrong trucks! That's what I get for learning something.

Bob

Roller bearing freight car trucks started to appear in significant numbers in the 50s and became the norm on new cars in the 60s.

Volume of the exterior of a cylinder is Pi times the radius squared times the length of the cylinder.  The interior diameter is smaller.  It may be a lot smaller in the case of an insulated tank.  Curved tank heads also complicate the calculation of volume.  If you start with model dimensions and calculate model volume and want to calculate prototype volume you need to multiply by 48 cubed or 110592.  Or you can convert model tank radius and length to the prototype values first and then you will have the prototype volume.

If you calculate the volume of a tank in cubic inches there are 231 to a US gallon.  If you calculate the volume in cubic feet multiply by 7.48 to get gallons.

One thing to note is water capacity in pounds stenciled on tank cars.  When a builder needs to verify the volume of a newly built tank car they will weigh it empty and then full of water.  By dividing the weight of the fresh water by 8.34 they can very accurately determine the number of gallons the tank holds.

What cars do you have?  Depending on the model we may be able to come up with a fairly good estimate of the tank volume.

Here's the six I have:

 Lionel:

IDM (now Atlas):

MTH (This one has recessed ends and is slightly larger diameter than the others):

MTH:

K-Line:

MTH:

The 3 UTLX and the K-Line cars have roller-bearings.

93561 has 100,000 capacity markings

89105 has 100,000 capacity markings

73114 has 80,000 capacity markings

Gulf car has 100,000 capacity markings

ATSF car has 140,000 capacity markings

Virginia Chemicals car doesn't have any capacity markings

On another note, I was Googling to see what commodities were carried in tank cars and one I found was for carrying printer's ink.  Who doesn't have a newspaper building on their layout that needs rolls of paper and ink?  There's always a need for tankcars and boxcars for supplying paper, ink, and machinery parts

Yeah.... that's it. What he said....

Wow! These are still around???

http://www.rrpicturearchives.n...ture.aspx?id=3663668

http://www.rrpicturearchives.n...ture.aspx?id=3408489

Bob

Those all look to be cars in the 8,000 gallon range.  50% Caustic soda solution weighs about 13 pounds a gallon so an 8,000 gallon tank and 50 ton trucks work out just about perfectly.  An 8,000 gallon tank hauling diesel fuel can't be filled to weight capacity on 40 ton trucks.

Yeah.... that's it. What he said....

Joe

LOL!!!   I fill tanks for a living, sometimes those skills come in handy.

Watch out, I'll start converting to water horsepower if someone asks really nicely. 

Multi dome cars like those would be museum pieces today.  Modern multi-compartment cars do exist and the MTH 20,000 gallon tank car is a pretty good model of one.

Ted,

So the "weight" stencil is the weight of water the car is capable of holding (on a given set of trucks)?

If that's the case, each commodity would have to be calculated prior to filling the tank car, so as not to overload the trucks?

Were most tank cars assigned to a specific service or could they clean them out and use them for any commodity?  Seems like it would be easier to keep them in use for a specific commodity than to do all that cleaning.

Would the paint color of the car signify a particular commodity or is that just the color of choice for the owner?

I still want to make this in O scale:

Bob

The Capacity or Capy stenciled on the left side of a car is the weight capacity of the car and is determined by the empty weight weight of the car and the gross weight capacity of the trucks.  There may be a water capacity in pounds stenciled elsewhere on the car.  Divide that number by 8.34 and it well tell you the volume of the car in gallons.

Cars can be cleaned and used for different commodities.  However, tank cars tend to be owned or leased by shippers and used for the same commodity over and over again.  Some commodities require special tank cars.  Propane must be shipped in pressurized tank cars.  Acids require special tank linings.  Cars need to be matched to the density of a liquid for safety and economy.

Today almost every commodity is closely matched to it's tank car so that a full load by weight is also a full load by volume.  In the steam era this was done to a degree but tended to be less precise than it is today.  Most steam era tank cars volumes were in the range of 6000, 8000, 10000 12000 and even 16,000 gallons.  If an 8000 gallon tank car was intended to haul petroleum products it would likely have 40 ton trucks since you can't even get 80,000 pounds of water in an 8,000 gallon tank and oil is lighter than water.

Tank car color was usually up to the car owner and basic black was common in the steam era and still is today.  Chemical and oil companies like Hooker, Shell and others did opt for some colorful paint schemes.

Ted,

Thanks and thanks for all these cool topics!

I used to live just down the street from the old Virginia Chemicals plant that was here in Portsmouth.  I used to photograph strings of black tank cars coming/going every day.

Since 9/11 I haven't done any railfanning, but I'd like to get back out and take some more pix.  CSX still comes into town and the Navy yard still gets it's share of traffic.  Norfolk Southern is just across the river and Petersburg is a little over an hour away, just don't know how receptive the RRs are these days to folks hanging around.

I'll do the math and see if I have to redo some of the lettering on my tank cars.  If I have another set of decals I'll repaint that ATSF into another UTLX car.

Bob

Be careful on how much math you start to do.  You might start to realize how many prototypical paint schemes have gone on tank cars that don't match the lettering.  The 1990s era generic modern tank cars from several manufacturers tended to get lettered as anything from 8,000 to 25,000 gallons and 50 to 100 tons.

Good one Ted!  For now I think I'll concentrate on getting the correct trucks under the cars.

I wish that someone would do a run of scale tank cars for some of the major chemical companies: Allied,Dupont,Dow,etc.  There are enough of the Hooker Chemical cars out there.

Norm

As I run mostly 50's era rolling stock, I would like to have an 8K tanker lettered for Texaco.  I have not seen any Atlas Texaco tankers.  I suppose that there is a licensing issue?  Does ayone know?

I wish that someone would do a run of scale tank cars for some of the major chemical companies: Allied,Dupont,Dow,etc.

Norm

Any other etc. chemical co. tank cars you are looking for? 

Lionel and weaver have good search functions by freight car type.

Lionel and MTH have good road name search functions.

You can find out what they have made if you look.

Atlas, well, the less said about searching their web site the better.

There are enough of the Hooker Chemical cars out there.

NO THERE ARE NOT!  We definitely need more 8000 gallon Hooker caustic soda tank cars.

Jim

I don't recall seeing an Atlas Texaco tank car.  MTH has done Texaco tank cars in the Rail King line, the same type that Ray and Bob have converted to Kadees.

I could sure use an 8000 gal "HOOKER" tank car, also.

While we're on the subject of tank cars, what happened to the former "Red Caboose" 10,000 gallon tank car tooling? I know that Atlas O purchased the former "Red Caboose" 8000 gallon tank car tooling (and are slowly pricing themselves out of the O-SCALE market), but nobody seems to have begun producing those beautiful 10,000 gallon cars.

Max Gray...

On the subject of tank cars...one of my favorites is the MTH Mohawk Petroleum car.  That used to be a local based company here in the San Francisco area.  This tank car is getting hard to find now.  Occasionally you can find one on The Bay.  Matt

Some better pictures of one of the San Juan tank cars:

Gentlemen,

   One of my favorite Tin Plate tankers is the Islays Red white & Blue tanker with silver

trimed hand break wheels, lines and caps.  Simply a fantastic Tanker.

PCRR/Dave

It was recommended that I post my recent Lionel 30,000 gallon ethanol tank car review video here. Hope this is beneficial to this thread and you all enjoy.

Jason 

MWB

Thanks for posting the wonderful photos of the San Juan tank cars.

Jason

And thank you for posting your excellent video review here.  I haven't put many miles on my Procor tank cars yet.  It is too bad that the light weight seems to have a detrimental effect on train handling.  I'll be interested to hear from anyone who has added 5 to 8 ounces of weight about how they handle at a weight closer to the big Atlas tank cars.

 I just got a shorty (G) tank car.

 It's cool looking to me. I like to get pictures of the real cars whenever I get a new model to compare. I don't know what the class/type of this car (whatever it's called) is to look up it's picture?