it was my first day at another power plant in Ontario today. This power plant is fed with Bunker C oil. The fascinating item is that it is supplied by rail. The tanker train is made up of specially made tank cars that are interconnected. This interconnection enables the customer to force hot steam through the pipes and warm up the Bunker C so that it can be removed from the cars. In the winter when it gets up -40C it will take several days before the oil is warm enough to come out of the tank cars.
‘‘Roundhouse’’,Products,makes those cars also,50ft tank train cars,very heavily detailed,they have a black flexible hose,that connects each car together at each end at the top of the walk-way,which by the way is a bear to glue together and the walkway itself,with some patience,looks very good,I have quite a few of them,for I like tank cars…I don’t know if Roundhouse,is still in business though…
5 Years,ago,I stopped in my LSH and bought every single,‘‘Roundhouse’’ tanker he had,twenty in all,the one’s in the,yellow,orange box,list sticker was,9.98 per kit,he gave them to me for,9.00 each…still have them all,only four aren’t built…I like Tankers…
Regarding the prototype, as I recall, I remember reading an article in Trains Magazine (can’t recall the issue, would have been probably early 90’s), on a tank train that ran across, I think the upper Midwest to California. It was an interesting article and it showed interconnected cars like the one posted by the OP. they were transporting oil in 78 car unit trains. Anyone remember that article?
For quite a while, SP hauled oil over Tehachapi to a refinery in the LA basin. As late as 2011 (and it may still be in operation, a tank train operated from San Ardo, CA (about 30 miles north of Paso Robles) on the old SP Coast Line to a refinery near LA. I recall seeing UP units switching the train at San Ardo while driving down highway 101.
Oct 1978 Trains had a 1-page article about a “tank train” operation from a refinery in Canada to a power plant in Michigan. Cars uded then look like 50 footers.
I’d be quite interested in seeing someone do a newer version of these cars. Athearn has updated and re-released other old MDC/Roundhouse freight cars, so maybe they could do the same with these.
CN has run a few of these tanktrains in Quebec, and still runs regular tank trains (CN 785 and 786) between the Ultramar St. Romuald QC refinery and the Maitland ON Ultramar oil terminal. They normally run trains composed of three sets of 17 cars.
I plan to model this train eventually in HO (although a compressed version!), as it makes a really cool looking unit train. The CN/GATX cars look pretty neat too: