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.

Wednesday Wanderings

 A few years ago, my wife and I were walking the beautiful riverside trail along the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington.  One of the access points for the trail is next to a business park, the Columbia Business Center, that stands on what was a Kaiser shipyard during World War II.  Some of the shipyard buildings still exist along with many modern commercial and industrial buildings.  This area is rail served by a short spur off of the BNSF main line that also runs along the river and through downtown Vancouver.

The BNSF trackage was once the SP&S main line along the North shore of the Columbia River, and I've spent many enjoyable hours railfanning at various points along those tracks.  The spur in the business park serves several businesses with occasional box cars of various commodities, covered hopper cars for a plastics manufacturer and flat car loads of steel for fabricators and some ship building.

During our visit, we happened on three neat switchers sitting idle on a siding next to one of the buildings.

photos by author

CBCX-565 is an SSB1200, formerly ATSF 2350, which started life as an EMC NW2 in 1937, later rebuilt by EMD to an SW1200 and then to an SSB1200 by the ATSF shops.  It later went to Amtrak before arriving here.

This neat little critter, CBCX-103, is a GE 25 ton industrial switcher that was built in 1942 for Kaiser Shipyard.  You can see how diminutive it is, nestled up against this next locomotive.

With the little 25 tonner just peeking into the photo on the right, GE 86 ton centercab CBCX-102 looks much more imposing.  This loco was originally built for the Pacific Lumber Company in Eureka, California and delivered in 1956.  Despite not having the spiffy orange and black paint job and logo of the other two, this is the youngest of the three.  The centercab has distinctive rectangular chrome framed headlights, shown below in an oblique view that also highlights the orange safety striping.

It's great to see these workhorses still earning their keep with second, and even third, owners, although clearly not seeing daily use.  Finding small railroading scenes like this is a kick and inspiration for my modeling interests as well.  

Where's This Train Headed?

Here is some background and detail on what my modeling and interests in model railroading are about.  In my first post, I described my model railroad as a proto-freelanced branch of the Great Northern Railroad, set in the Puget Sound area during 1965, with a forest products emphasis.

Specifically, I'm calling it the Olympic Peninsula Branch of the Pacific Coast Railroad (PCRR), which was actually a small branch of the Great Northern in Western Washington after 1951.  The real PCRR was primarily a coal hauling line conceived originally by investors in the Seattle area to carry the coal mined from nearby seams in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains to the port of Seattle for use by steamships.  

There is an excellent book, Pacific Coast - Seattle's Own Railroad, authored by Kurt Armbruster, which tells the story of the origins and history of this small railroad.  The book focuses primarily on the history from 1874 up to the Great Northern purchase in 1951.  Great Northern operated the line until the Burlington Northern merger in 1970.

Book Cover

The book is available for purchase through the Great Northern Railroad Historical Society (GNRHS).  You can follow a link to the GNRHS store page for the book here.  

In my model world, the PCRR operates from Seattle to the Pacific coast on the Olympic Peninsula, and obtains much of its revenue from various forest products industries, including lumber as well as pulp and paper mills. My PCRR pivoted from coal to forest products as the steam era waned and the coal seams were abandoned, expanding it's reach for this rapidly growing revenue source.  Using my modeler's license, the line runs mostly on track that actually once belonged to the Northern Pacific Railroad, extending west from Centralia to Grays Harbor on the coast, as well as north to the naval shipyard at Bremerton, a significant customer.  The Olympic Peninsula is the land mass west of Puget Sound, between Seattle and the Pacific coast, where these locales are found (see map below).

It's important to distinguish between the Pacific Coast Railroad and the Pacific Coast Railway, a completely different and unrelated railroad that operated in California.

When the Great Northern purchased the Pacific Coast Railroad, they soon replaced steam engines with diesels, using primarily GN owned motive power, and also "upgraded" some of the well used PCRR rolling stock, especially the aged gondolas used for hauling coal, with surplus GN cars.  

In my world, the PCRR has more and a wider variety of rolling stock as well as some of their own diesel engines, but GN or other Hill Line motive power and rolling stock are common.  This allows me to plausibly operate Northern Pacific or Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway (SP&S) equipment alongside PCRR.  As the Milwaukee Railroad also operated in this area, there is significant interchange with them as well.

This map shows the trackage, which was originally Northern Pacific, then BNSF, and is currently owned and operated by The Puget Sound & Pacific Railroad Co., part of Genesee and Wyoming Inc. a short line railroad holding company.

credit - By Aaron Schwarz - http://psp.ghrr.org/, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24317853

My layout will focus on a major pulp and paper mill complex in Grays Harbor with local switching and a small yard and team track.  It will be a shelf layout primarily, although I hope to be able to accommodate a loop of track for a bit of continuous running as well.  This is both for my own enjoyment as well as my grandkids, in case we just want to "run trains".  Offline industries will include a plywood mill, lumber mills, creosoting plant, as well as a fish processor and cranberry packing plant.  I mentioned the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, and PSNS will be an important, if more occasional customer providing interesting loads.

This scenario allows me to model and operate a range of rolling stock, from standard 40 foot single or double door boxcars, to flat cars, gondolas and chemical tank cars.  Motive power is primarily switchers and four axle locomotives for short local trains setting out and picking up cars at the mill and other industries.  I plan to model the pulp and paper complex extensively and will discuss this in more depth soon.

Another attraction of my chosen railroads and setting is the opportunity to explore the history of these railroads in the Northwest and to model them accurately as I learn and build my skills.  Future posts will expand on these themes.

Photo by author

This photo is a present day view of the Navy owned track near Bremerton, my local railroad only a mile or so from where I live. I think it captures the spirit of branch line railroading for me, with the tracks leading to adventure and discovery around the bend ahead.

Beginnings

 The beginning of a story (or a blog about railroad modeling) sets the scene and points in a direction of travel or narrative.   The main characters are also revealed, although not always right away.

My scene is a proto-freelanced subsidiary of the Great Northern Railroad in the Puget Sound region of Western Washington in 1965, with an emphasis on forest products, particularly paper mills.  I model in HO scale and enjoy building models that are reasonably accurate and detailed.  Currently, my layout is only a concept although my intention is to begin construction of a shelf layout module this year.  My workbench is active with model building projects ranging from straightforward plastic kit builds to resin or mixed media kits, along with some superdetailing and kitbash projects.  Scale vehicles are an aspect of my interests and will feature here from time to time as well.

In this case, the direction is topics around my interests in the hobby of model railroading, as well as the history of my chosen railroads, and related subjects that capture my interest or may be of interest to others. 

I'm no modeling or historical guru.  My blog is intended as a creative outlet and a way for me to share my efforts as I continue to build skills and knowledge.  It's also a means to give myself some encouragement as well as accountability to work toward my hobby goals.

Set Box Top & End From My Collection

The model railroading bug started for me when I was about eight or nine and my dad brought home an Athearn starter set.  This is the box that set came in, which currently is in use as an open topped tray to hold a few structure models.  Although the picture is a steam engine with passenger cars, the set was a diesel engine with freight cars.

This was a typical beginners set that included the engine, a few freight cars and a caboose - all Athearn classic "blue box" models that were ready to run, along with an oval of sectional brass track.

The photo below shows those set cars as well as a few items from those that my dad purchased to expand our small Plywood Pacific over the next few years.  There were others as well, many still stored in my boxes of rolling stock, some kitbash or upgrade fodder.

The boxes in the set are distinctively different than artwork for Athearn blue box cars sold separately, with the rolling stock boxes being nearly all light blue, no image on top.  Even the locomotive box is different in that it has the blue band on each end of the box top.

You will note a few things here.  First, the locomotive and caboose are Southern Pacific, not Great Northern.  At least there are two Hill Lines box cars in the set, the Northern Pacific mechanical refrigerator and the Great Northern plug door box.  Later purchases trended more closely toward my growing fascination with the GN and other Hill Lines (NP, CB&Q, SP&S and Pacific Coast RR).

The Tyco C420 locomotives are both fantasy schemes, although to my eyes they were very attractive at the time!  Many hours of fun model railroading were provided by these locos, which featured working headlights and had a massive look.  My deep appreciation for Alco diesels may have just started with these two models.

The Roundhouse covered hopper kit is one of those early cars that I have started to kitbash and upgrade.  It is getting square hatch covers from Details West, along with wire grabs and ladder rungs, more detailed brake gear, new trucks, paint and decals.  This is one of those on again, off again projects that sits and waits patiently for inspiration.  

From this start, my interests in building models developed, as did my focus on the Great Northern.  Much later I settled on 1965 as my  modeling year.  This was due to a number of reasons, including the type of equipment operated, roof-walks and a somewhat contrary attraction to the struggles of railroads at the time from the competitive pressures of trucking, consolidations and fading passenger traffic.  Last but probably not least, I found Glacier Green to be a favorite rolling stock color scheme, while not sharing an appreciation for Big Sky Blue with the simplified Rocky logo, which was introduced by the GN in the next year.

Later posts will expand on these themes but for now this gives you some idea of what I am about.  I hope that you find something that is of interest and I welcome the opportunity to hear from you as the journey progresses.