Differences between Gasoline / Oil tank cars and tank cars that carry gases?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Thinking about doing a oil storage spur in my town. I have plenty of tank cars, but I bought what I like and gave no thought to what they would have carried in them. Would they pretty much look the same?

If I go with a oil storage I would be using this storage unit.

It all in Germany so I cannot read the signs. If I had to guess I would think it held gases and not a liquid like gasoline or oil.

Any tips on what to uses for cheap piping I may have around the house? I am looking for any spurs left from models I have built.

Pictures would be great.

Cuda Ken

2

They have a few of those surviving in philly. The tank actually retracts into the ground. I don’t know the purpose of it retracting. Maybe to protect it in wartime?

3

The purpose of the tank “retracting into the ground” is to eliminate air in a partially empty tank that holds flammable material - natural gas, gasoline (which is probably what is in the Shell tank) and other highly volatile and flammable liquids and gases. The top of the tank goes down as the tank is emptied. By elliminating air from the tank, you reduce the chances for fire and explosion. Neither of which is a good thing. [:D]

4

Hi!

In the “old” days, the various oil companies had their own tankcars (which were labled with the company name), or leased tankcars that had the private tankcar markings (i.e. mobx - Mobil, sunx - Sunoco, etc.). By good ol days, I am referring to the '30s thru '60s or so.

Crude - when hauled via tankcar - was typically in a black 8 or 10kgal single dome car, which were almost always “dirty” with spillage, etc. Products were hauled in fairly clean cars, and could be with one, two, or three domes - one for each compartment with a different product (i.e. regular/premium gasoline, etc.).

During WWII, hauling oil via tankcar was a huge business, as the Atlantic & Gulf waters were teaming with enemy submarines. Once the “big inch” pipeline got built (Texas to northeast) in 1943, then rail traffic lessened.

As with most all tankcars, they usually kept the same product service, as cleaning was a chore - a dangerous one too!

You could use most tankcars for your petroleum siding, avoiding those obviously lettered for other businesses, or with platforms around the dome (typically chemical service) or heating coils (typically edible oil), and the like. If you don’t use t/cs with oil company signage, then pretty much any plain ol black tank car will do.

For piping, Cornerstone puts out two piping kits ($10 each), one for refineries and one for tankage. I’ve mixed and matched and used them for my terminal. Remember, while you would probably want to show pipes coming out of the storages, they can then disappear underground into trenches as they are in the “real world”.

Oh, one more thing, plastic kit sprues work really well for piping!!!

Mobilman44

5

Thanks. I drive past one all the time and never knew why it retracted.

I looked it up on google earth and there’s a street view of one with the tank retracted

6

Folks,

What you are looking at is a natural gas storage tank. It has a floating roof to hold in the vapors from mixing with oxygen. These used to be very common in the mid 20th century in the big cities, but the ones I knew of are long gone. Piping and underground storage has replaced them.

Refineries also have “floating roof” tanks for liquids that are more volitle. Again, the floating roof eliminates airspace so as to prevent a big BOOM!

Mobilman44

7

Sorry, Ken - totally blew away the original question:

During the transition period (which, considering how many steam engines you’ve run into the ground, I assume is your era[:)]), you could pretty much generalize that tank cars with large domes carry liquids, and tanks with small domes carry gases. Not necessarily true in all cases, but generally speaking, that’s the way it works.

An interesting little tidbit I heard many years ago had it that the long strings of UTLX tank cars that you could see back in the 40s and 50s criss-crossing the country were mostly carrying good ol’ 3-in-1 Oil. Don’t know if that’s true, but I find it interesting, nonetheless.

8

Ken, that tank looks like a gas holder (not gasoline). The tank is comprised of telescoping rings, with the largest one at the bottom. As gas enters, it lifts the top segment. Once that is filled, a lip around the bottom of that segment engages with a flange around the top edge of the next segment, lifting it, and so on. There are guides and rollers to keep everything properly aligned as the tank segments rise and fall. If I’m not mistaken, these are usually connected by pipes to both the source of the gas and to the consumer and act as a sort of surge tank where gas production was not constant nor was consumption.

Wayne

9

This type of tank is used with a pipeline not with tank cars. The tank cars that would haul this product would not be the ones that would haul gasoline or fuel oil.

One could make the case that the rail cars most associated with this type of storage tank would be open top hoppers for coal, many municipalities made their own gas from coal back in the 1920’s or so.

Gasoline of fuel oil storage tanks would be solid metal of fixed size with no exterior framework.

10

Post here one time you wore out a steam engine and you never live it down! [:D] By the way, I have wore out more diesels than steam engines. [:-^]

Far as era, if I had to pick one I would say I am around 1955 to 1960’s. I have 7 steam engines 4 BL2’s and lot of F and E units. My DMP building would cover from the 20’s to current day.

I may have to rethink about the oil storage spur with it being the wrong kind of storage bin. I was originally going to use it as a bakery so my grain elevator had some one to sell to.

Any pictures you folks care to share?

Thanks for all your time as well.

Cuda Ken

11

Now I’m totally confused. This type of bin (actually any bin that large) would not have anything to do with a bakery. In the 1950’s a bakery would probably recieve flour in bags in boxcars.

What are you wanting pictures of?

Dave H.

12

13

We had one of these in my hometown. It held cooking and heating gas that was a by by-product of making coke. When the natural gas pipeline was laid in the 1950’s, the gas company switched over to the new fuel and the tank was eventually torn down. As to why it retracted, I was told it helped provide pressure to the system. Sounded good at the time, but the explosive vapors explanation makes sense, as well. John Timm

14

It has always been my understanding that the large tanks of this particular nature, situated in urban locations and supplying natural gas to the city, moved up and down to maintain gas pressure in the system and that this function had nothing to do with excluding air from inside the tank for safety purposes. Considering that the gas was always under considerable pressure from the enormous weight of the tank bearing down on and compressing the gas, the introduction of “air” into the system, at only atmospheric pressure (15psi), should be essentially impossible.

It is in the case of tanks storing volatile liquids, that the tank tops of some are made to descend to prevent formation of airs pocket in the top of the tank, but there the product flows of its own weight, not as a result of pressure created by the tank itself.

CNJ831

15

Don’t sweat it Ken. I wore out lots of steamers in my younger days, most before 1979. By 1980 I had gone predominantly diesel and have worn out a bunch of them as well. I now have only 6 steamers, 4 of which are operational.

Now, back to the original question. The tank you have in your photo looks to be a natural gas holder. I saw lots of those when I lived in Germany. They would be serviced by pipelines and not tank cars as I’m someone has probably told you by now. If I remember correctly the type of tank car for hauling natural gas would have small domes while those used for liquid gas/petroleum would have large domes, or so my fire fighter training tells me.

16

Those telescoping tanks were originally used in conjunction with coal gasification plants to hold so-called ‘water gas,’ produced by introducing water into a bed of hot coal. (Major components were hydrogen and carbon monoxide.) When natural gas pushed water gas out of the market the gas companies continued to use the same infrastructure, but stopped receiving coal (by barge, in New York City.)

Starting in the 1950s, the telescoping tanks were taken out of service and dismantled whenever they would require significant maintenance. I recall seeing a documentary of CDI dropping a rather humongous specimen in Brooklyn. Huge, but relatively fragile, it only needed a rather small amount of explosive to convert it from a big, tall structure to a pile of bent sheet metal and cut girders.

Having that structure in use on your layout would imply that it could be associated with a facility which would either receive or load LPG tank cars - receive, if there was no gas pipeline to your town, load if your railroad served towns that were similarly deprived. As for your tank car collection, check the small print (assuming it is there) on each one. They could carry anything from edible oils to red fuming nitric acid.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with an anhydrous ammonia tank car in service)