Wednesday Wanderings - Tank Car Edition

 Travel, whether for work or pleasure, can sometimes provide an opportunity to find and photograph interesting railroad subjects.  In this Wandering, I share a few tank cars that could have been in use during the period that I model, and which offer interesting details for reference in modeling.

This first tank car was located at the Marias Museum of History & Art in Shelby, MT.  My wife and I were attending the Great Northern Railroad Historical Society (GNRHS) convention held at Glacier National Park in 2010.  One of the activities offered was an all day bus tour to several locations along the BNSF (former GN) line, including a stop at this eclectic museum, which had a caboose and tank car alongside a collection of antique farming equipment.

I have not been able to determine the origin of this car, which has reporting marks USA 19049.  The other lettering was too faded to read, so I do not have many details.  The car is sitting on a very nice set of Andrews trucks and easily accessible on all sides for photos.  I won't overwhelm you with all of them, but this next photo shows an interesting lever hand brake and some of the rivet detail clearly.

Further back, my work regularly called for driving trips to Eastern Washington, including the Richland - Pasco - Kennewick Tri-Cities area, which is the location of the Department of Energy's Hanford Site, which was the Manhattan Project site that produced the majority of the plutonium used for nuclear weapons beginning in WWII and ending in 1987.  Pasco is also the location of a major rail yard that was once owned by the SP&S Railroad and which still serves the BNSF today.

Behind some warehouses that date back to the WWII era and are now an industrial park, there is a collection of vintage railroad equipment, both freight and passenger, that is openly accessed.

This welded ICC 103-W tank car built by GATC in August 1949 is one of the pieces of rolling stock there.  The stenciling notes that the tank is Saran lined, likely for corrosive chemical service of some kind.  Original reporting marks were painted over, and the number HO-10H-3686 is not one I have identified. 

This photo is a close up view of the double shelf coupler on the brake end of the car.  This type of coupler is relatively newer than the car, and is designed to prevent another car's coupling "riding" up or under the tank car coupling and possibly puncturing the tank in a derailment.  From other stenciling on this car, it appears that it may have been in use until the mid 1990's, which could explain why this coupling was retrofitted.  Note the air brake hose detail also.

Here's one last tank car view to finish off our Wandering this week, this one also taken in Pasco on the same trip in 2005.  This is a riveted car, built by AC&F in January 1941.  Unfortunately I did not get a clear picture showing the type of the car, but it has an unusual large platform around the dome.  My guess is this was added some time after the car was built, as it still has a small side platform below the dome on this side that appears to be original.  Again, it seems this car was in use into the 1990s.

Forest Products as Traffic

 Earlier I mentioned that forest products are a primary focus of my layout interests.  This interest is expressed not only by my decision to model a paper mill as the central industry on the layout but also in the revenue traffic that the Olympic Peninsula Branch will carry and, necessarily, the types of freight cars needed to handle this traffic.

The inclusion of appropriate loads on various types of freight cars is a great way to increase the variety of industries served, implying their existence off "stage" as they feed traffic to the portion of the railroad modeled on the layout.

The Great Northern, like many Western railroads, depended heavily on forest products for revenue.  Advertisements and other GN publicity materials illustrate this well.

This one, showing rolls of paper coming off of the finishing line at a paper mill:

1959 magazine ad - author's collection

Another discussing transport of logs and lumber, as well as promoting the railroad's efforts in developing industrial land for forest product manufacturing:

1957 magazine ad - author's collection

The boxed text in the center of this ad points out that the railroad not only transported forest products, but also consumed them for their uses, such as with ties for track.  Yet another source of loads for freight cars, in this case for company service and maintenance-of-way efforts.

Going into more detail, company publications provide interesting background and examples of car loading for various wood products.

from Talking it Over, GN employee publication

March 1965 - author's collection

This short article includes very helpful detail photographs of several different plywood and lumber loads on bulkhead flat cars, which were fairly recent developments in the mid-60's.  It is interesting to note that full and partially wrapped as well as unwrapped loads are all shown.  This is a period where shippers were transitioning to new types of cars as well as new means of protecting their products from the elements.  Previously, much finished lumber was shipped in boxcars, laboriously loaded by hand, as well as on standard flat cars, particularly rough lumber.  In some cases, gondolas were also used.  The desire for faster loading of larger loads, and for protection from the elements, was driving change in the railroad practices at this time.

Great Northern Goat, publicity publication

June 1965 - author's collection

This article in a monthly GN publication highlights a new customer for the railroad, a plywood mill in Montana.  The bottom photograph of a box car with the iconic standing Rocky goat logo shows forklift loading of plywood into what appears to be a double door 40' car.  This car would have been in my favorite glacier green color, a very signature car for the GN and one that sparked my interest in the Great Northern as a kid.

Lumber mills, plywood plants and logging are all typical of the forest product customers providing loads that were a mainstay for the GN and for my model railroad.  Other loads that would be common include telephone poles on flats or gondolas, often very long and requiring idler flat cars; cedar shakes, woodchips and boxcars with paper products inside.

There is another entire set of loads and cars involved with pulp and paper mills, with a variety of tank cars handling chemicals, additives and byproducts.  These are deserving of a much more detailed treatment in a future post.

As I have been building my model freight car roster, it has been helpful to look at available information like the advertising and promotional materials above, as well as period photographs, traffic reports and equipment rosters.  These have shown the variety of flat cars, gondolas and box cars used for forest products by the GN and sister railroads in the Northwest.

I plan to highlight these various car types in more detail, along with their loads, in the coming months.