I’ve got the Walthers Interstate Fuel and Oil Company kit. It comes with a stand which I presume is for unloading oil tank cars, but I’ve never seen one in action. Here’s what it looks like:
The two black tubes at the top swivel like see-saws, independently. Since they are at about the height of the top of the car, I assume they would somehow hook up to the top. Should they be mounted so that they swivel down on to the top of the car’s dome? Would there be a hose of some sort associated with these, or would the oil flow down through the swivel mount? Are these, in fact, for unloading the car (as would be appropriate at a fuel oil distributer) or would you only see them at a loading station like a refinery?
Also, in a three-dome car, are there three separate tanks? In my location, I’d rather position this thing so that it would nominally be over the center dome, but I’d have to put it elsewhere if the car might be spotted so that any of the domes would be under the unloading tubes.
Somehow, I would have suspected that tank cars would get loaded from the top and unloaded from the bottom.
That’s an interesting device. Sorry that I can’t help you with it except for an observation.
There appears to be a right angled bend at the left hand ends of each “pipe”. Should these point downward instead of toward the side perhaps? Then it would make sense that they are fill pipes.
I’ve been trying to figure out the exact same thing for months now. Mine is part of the Walthers Fueling platform. Are the hoses attached to each end of the stand and it just functions as a conduit between the tank car and the storage tank? I don’t know. [D)]
Anyhow, I’m hoping that you (and I) can get a definitive answer on this…
I’m glad I’m not the only one who can’t figure it out. I too have the Walther’s diesel fueling platform which has the same device. I can only assume it is an unloading rack since the platform itself has two hoses for fueling the diesel locos. The pictures on the kit box show it positioned next to the storage tank. I think I asked the same question when I got this kit last winter but I don’t remember anyone having a definitive answer. Hopefully this time someone can explain this.
Well, this is something new. Usually, questions like this get a definitive answer pretty quickly. It’s good to know I’m not the only one trying to figure this thing out.
There are indeed angled bends at the car-end of the swivel pipes. However, they do go straight down, but the angle is only about 15 degrees, not 90. In the photo, that makes them look like they go out to the side at 90 degrees. The way these things are swivel-mounted, you can’t install them sideways.
And for the “why don’t you Google instead of wasting our time” crowd, well, I did that first. Nothing like this showed up. The best info I got is that tanks are “usually” unloaded from the bottom, but some pressurized tanks could be unloaded from the top. On this particular 3-dome car, though, there don’t appear to be any fittings, at least not in the center. So, I could easily imagine a vertical pipe inside the car going down from the dome to the bottom of the tank. A pump would be used to start the flow, which would continue as a siphon as long as the destination tanks were below the level of the tank car. In this model, the ground-level pipes from this structure go directly to a pump house.
this might be me being way off-base… but what if the “pipes” are to get the fuel INTO the locomotives? Or maybe they’re some other sort of supporting mechanism for the fuel lines?
I have a photo of one of these racks for my prototype Ahnapee & Western at a Cities Service bulk oil dealership in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. I also have a track chart that lists it as an “unloading rack”.
The photo I have (not at work with me) shows 2 hoses hanging down loose from the ends of the ‘cantilever pipes’ on the car side of the rack. I assume that the hoses are hooked to the car, and the pump pulls the petroleum product out of the car. I’m not sure if the hose hooks up to a valve on the dome, or if it simply is dropped into the car to suck out the liquid like a vacuum. But, there is the issue of 2 hoses… The two hoses could be ‘blow’ and ‘suck’ pipes from the pumps to force air into the car, while sucking out the liquid to equalize pressure?
Most tank cars have gravity valves at the bottom though, right? Seems like a lot of work to unload a tank car through the dome…
Andy
PS: A Google search for “unloading tank car” brought these very interesting sites up:
I was thinking about the swivel arms, particularly if the car-side has a hose attached. That suggests a mechanical siphon-starting mechanism, where the arms would be “pumped” to nudge the viscous liquid over the top and start the siphoning action.
I would believe the unloading pipe extends to the bottom of the tank.
Theoretically if the dome is airtight (which it should) you could force air in and speed unloading.
I worked at a chemical plant for 11 years. We had a material that had to be 300 degrees to thaw enough to flow. For safety we had to pressurize the car and unload thru the top manway. We made a plate that fit the top manway of the railcar and had a dip pipe that extended to the bottom of the car. The plate sealed down to the manway when bolted. We used nitrogen to apply about 50 pounds of pressure to push the material up the dip pipe to the storage tank. Other cars containing Ethanol were unloaded thru the bottom valve and loaded thru the top manway. We had a boom similar to the one on the model that had a counter weight on one end and 2 swivel joints about 3 foot apart and a 6 foot length of braided sop of the stainless flex hose that dropped over into the top of the tank car. Tweet
It’s an unloading boom - I asked about it earlier this year and this is what I came up with:
In most of the photos, you can see a profile view. I “assumed” the included pipes were the boom and added my own hose to them to unload each tanker. Hope this helps.
In the Walthers kit, there are two hoses between the tracks of the loading platform for fueling the loco. This gizmo stands next to the fuel storage tank to the side of the platform. Logically, that tells me it is used to unload fuel from tank cars to the storage tank. As MisterBeasley noted in his original post, Walthers has included the same device in their Interstate Fuel and Oil Company kit but I would guess it would serve the same purpose, trasfering fuel from the tank cars to the storage tanks.
One of arlaurent’s references gave me a new vocabulary word: eduction**.** It seems that there is typically an eduction pipe going from the dome at the top down into a sump in the bottom of the car. The dome has another fitting for a pressure line. I now think that the dual booms in the unloading fixture should be fitted with one hose for each fitting. Pressure is applied to the upper line, and the fluid in the car is forced up the eduction pipe and out the fuel line to the booms, and then out another hose to the rest of the system.
The thing that’s completely missing from the kits is the hoses, as beautifully modelled by ezielinski above. Eric, what did you use for the hoses?
If I’m not mistaken, this Walthers Kit represents a fuel dealership that receives petroleum products for resale. This being the case, what you’re refering to are definitely unloading stands. As already mentioned you will need to add flexible pipes that can reach the bottom of the tank car. I believe there should be a pump house included in the kit. If not included, you will need to add one as well as some pipes, cut-off valves, etc. from the stands to the pump house and from there to the storage tanks. You will also need to add some means of transfering the petroleum products from the storage tanks to trucks. I believe several manufactures make a fuel loading platform, but which ones escape me at the moment.
Of course, everything I’ve said depends on my not being mistaken.
The kit has a pump house, and a loading rack for trucks. It’s also got 5 tanks (3 horizontal, 2 vertical.) The horizontal tanks are mounted on the same base plate as the truck platform, and the plumbing is all supplied. The vertical tanks come with plumbing, too, but I’ve already got some styrene rod to fashion longer pipes so I can put the tanks where I want them.
