I’m looking to add some moving oil pumps to the HO layout. The layout is set in Southern California during the late 1950s.
I’ve seen the Walthers oil pump kit over the years and was wondering if this would be appropriate for the era? This is the kit I’m referring to:
I know that oil pumping was and still is going strong in the Atwood/Richfield area on the former Santa Fe line through north Orange County. It’s now part of the BNSF transcon from Hobart to San Berdoo. This is the area, Atwood, I’d like to partially recreate. The older photos I have of the Richfield area show oil derricks, but I can’t see any pumps. Unless I’m way off here, but I thought the derricks were for drilling and once the well is at the right depth a pump is installed.
What I can’t seem to find out is if the “horse head” style of pump would be accurate for late 1950s California. They are all over the place now, and have been there since I remember in the early 1980s. But being born in 1979, I’m not sure what the earlier practices were.
If the Walthers model is appropriate, how well does it work via their motorizing unit? Can the motor be placed underneath the layout? It’s just a plywood sheet where I want to place a few of the pumps.
Also how much noise does the motor make? The real pumps have a really nice rhythmic and squeak sound.
I figured someone would have a video of the Walthers kit moving online, perhaps at YouTube, but I could not find any.
If the Walthers kit is not the greatest, are there other options for a moving pump in HO scale?
By the way, searching online found me the following links for what historical horse head pumps can look like:
Way back when!!! Somewhere in the late 50’s (57,58 or59)MR did one of their bluebook articles on modeling oilfields. Now as I remember and that is going back a few years that design should be fine realizing that pumps were a lot smaller back then. All you need to operate it is a motor and a disk on the end. The rod coming down from the pump goes to the disk and moves like a piston rod on a steam engine (up and down instead of back and forth). It should be fairly simple to rig several to one motor in varying stages of motion.
Scale Structures Limited made a small oil pump that I’ve seen operate. Its about half size the Walthers HO model. I would think that a Walthers N scale could be used, just dont use the kit’s ladders.
If 3-5 were all in line (as oil fields do), they could be powered on a slow turning drive shaft under the layout connected with an o-ring to each pump’s enclosed gear reduction housing. Using an old alarm clock motor turning about 3 RPM.
I model the early 1960s and the Walthers model (Lufkin Mfg.) fits that era. Oil well pumps out in the fields were not finced off, that was done in cities for safety.
A lot of pumpjacks in Alberta are powered by electric motors and are very quiet, some isolated units are run by natural gas, and remember the fence(to keep the farmer from dragging his dead cow under the pump and claiming it was killed by the unit)
Oil pumps come in all sizes, some small and some quite large. I remember in college it was great fun to ride the horsehead, but that is another story. They can be powered by electricity, natural gas or whatever. Some older ones were powered by metal rods connected to a central power station. They do make a typical rhymthic metal creeking noise.
The older picture you referenced that contained metal rigs, was probably from the 30’s. It was typical of that era to construct a metal tower. Later portable drilling and workover rigs were developed and the practice of erecting towers was discontinued. If you like the tower look, one or two could be appropriate.
Flowlines or pipes can be below ground or setting on the ground. They usually flow from the individual well heads to a point where serveral vessels are located. The vessels are gun barrels or dehydrators or separators. The separate the oil from the water and any associated gas. The layout is dependent on the oil qualities so freelancing is fine. Usually some sort of storage building will be near, usually galvanized siding with pipe racks with some line pipe located close by. Oil from several of these separating stations will flow to a tank where the oil is accumulated for sale. The tanks used to be made from redwood, but metal replaced many of them by the 70’s. Oil is sold or run from these tanks into a pipeline. There are usually some above ground piping associated with gauges so the oil sale can be recorded.
Doing a YouTube search, I found some videos of the ones still working in the Richfield area (Placentia). These are the ones I’m familiar with, but have always wondered how long some of them have been pumping.
I hate to bring up old posts, but I built and installed the oil well this weekend. Nice model.
I also got the Walthers motor for it. Surprisingly smooth movement, and pretty simple to add. Only drawback is it needs a large cut into the layout board. The motor is rated at 12 volts and I hooked it up to my 12 volt accessory line on the layout. But at this voltage the pump moves too fast. I reduced the voltage with a 360 ohm resistor. Seems to be the perfect speed now. I’d be interested in what the voltage was reduced to with the resistor? But without knowing the motor amp draw I’m not sure how to figure it out.
I omitted the ladder and fence from the kit. The holes in the base for the fence posts were filled in. The model was painted with Polly/Floquil paints I had on hand. The base is concrete, and the pump uses grimy black and Santa Fe yellow. The concrete base is weathered with highly diluted grimy black. The colors were based off of a similar pump found on the cover of a Santa Fe annual report.
I’d like to add gravel to the cleared square around the pump and a gravel access road. And then surround the square with chain link fencing with a gate for the access road. But I can’t seem to find an easy to build chain link fence. The one that comes with the kit includes mesh and plastic poles. Way too time consuming and delicate to build, and it really is only intended to surround the base, not anything larger. Does anyone know of some simple to install HO scale chain link fencing? There’s got to be some plastic version out there that just needs to be painted and cut to the desired size, although I haven’t found one yet.
The easiest way to determine the voltage the motor is operating at is to get a voltmeter and measure the voltage across the motor. Or if it is easier to measure the voltage across the resistor, measure that and subtract it from 12V.
See if the package lists the motor’s resistance. If so and since this is a simple series circuit, the voltage drop across the motor is Vm=12V*Rm/(Rm+Rr). Where Vm = Voltage drop across the motor, Rm is the motor’s resistance, and Rr is the resistor’s resistance.
As a geologist and oilfield tragic it is great to see so many people with these Walther’s oil pump kits. I’m currently modelling an Australian oilfield set around the 1960’s to 1970’s and these kits are pretty much the same as the “Nodding Donkey’s” that were used then. As far as the OP’s questions are concerned, yes, these type of pumps (also called beam pumps as well as nodding donkeys) were used throughout the US from ~1940 onwards (perhaps earlier in the southern states, but I don’thave accurate information on that) and are still currently in use today on some oil wells. The Walther’s units are a good representation and certainly the best that I came across in a rather exhaustive search for oil pumps that I did about 6 months ago. The only bugbear with them is that the base of the unit will need about 3" of clearance below the ground level to fit the motor. The motor that Walther’s sell is a good unit with low gear ratio and relatively quiet, which gives a nice slow motion on the pump with almost no noise from the motor and only the ‘squeak’ from the moving parts in the pump (which you should lightly oil during assembly if you want to use the motor). To install the motor you are going to have to cut a hole in the baseboard, or build the area up by a few inches. I hope this was of some use. Cheers!
Below is an old reply I wrote to a similar line of questions regarding if oil pumps can be located ontop of hills.
"Many of the posts responding to the original question were correct. Wells are drilled on high or low ground. It is the subsurface configuration of the geological structure that matters to the oilman and the surface access. If the original questioner wants to add more interest to his remote well site he could consider adding additional features to this site. He could add some old wellheads representing abadonned wells or naturally flowing wells that do not require pump jacks. You would need what we call a “christmas tree” or wellhead with associated valves and piping in and out of the well. You can search the net for a wellhead or tree to model. If you do want to model another non-pumping well be sure and stain the ground beneath it with black oily stain. There was a comment about directionally drilled wells and that opens the possibility of adding more wells to the site also. For instance you could have two or more pump jacks beside one another both pumping away, their knodding donkey beams could be in or out of sequence adding visual interest. Each of these wells would be producing from different subsurface targets far apart or from different stratigraphic levels. Your well site will need a low lying separator tank for taking the water and gas out of the oil. You will need a stock tank to accumulate oil before the tank can be emptied by the truck or tank car.
The motor is a lot louder if you reverse the polarity. I kind of prefer the way the counterweights move in reverse polarity. Looking at the real things they can go either way, so for now I’m sticking with the quieter way.
I’ll have to take a video of it and post to YouTube. There doesn’t appear to be any video clips of this pump moving posted online yet.
The smaller one is HO…two larger ones are O Gauge. Since they are controlled by DC powerpacks, you can dial in whatever speed that looks correct to you…
