For 30 years GATX has been building and leasing the unique Tank Train Tank Car Trains. They can be loaded and unloaded from a single car. It is still amazing.
Southern Paciifc long had captive operations of the GATX Tank Trains. Do the Tank Train operations still continue on the dominating Union Pacific?
Canadian National added new GATX Tank Trains over the past 5 to 6 years.
Where have all these Tank Trains been operating over the past 30 Years?
Is there a resource on the web detailing the long history of Tank Train operations?
The H&M Productions book on Tank Cars in the Classic Freight Car series has photographic examples some of these Tank Trains.
I have only seen a few Tank Train unit trains every couple of years on the GTW Mainline in Michigan. The Tank Trains come and go from GATX in Chicago.
The GATX Website is a bit sparse on the Tank Train.
The train between Bakersfield (later Mojave) and Carson is history. However, there is one that operates between San Ardo and Carson (the crude is sent via pipeline to Torrance from Carson).
They can’t load the whole train from one car. The cars are simipermanantly coupled into sets of 8 cars. There is a big hose that connects between the cars at the top of each end of the tanks. Then the 8 car sets are coupled together to become trains of 72,80 or 88 cars.
Dureing Metrolink construction on the Soledad Canyon line the cans were re-routed down through Cajon pass. Here is an empty returning to Bakersfield passing Highland sideing on the Palmdale cutoff.
Here is another empty just east of Woodford sideing (just below Tehachapi loop)
I actually did photograph some more recent GATX Tank Train Tank Cars, as shown in the February 2006 photo, on a CN Train coming from the Chicago area, where the GATX Headquarters are located. I wondered if they were still being operated somewhere on the CN.
Andrew, a Tank Train used to be destined for the power plant in Bay City, years and years ago.
It seemed like a good technology, but probably had a few drawbacks, which is why it isn’t advertised of used much any more. The last ones I saw were used by Conrail itself, possibly for transporting diesel fuel on-line.
I wonder if we can use them to get water from Desalination plants on the ocean somewhere to boost supplies of various population centers that might need it?
There was a Tank Train of 75 cars in length that ran from Sarnia On to Oswego NY sporadicaly some years ago. I beleive Montana Rail Link has one that runs twice a day.
[:-,] 5 years later on, I’ll add to this thread rather than starting a new one and causing the subject to be further scattered about in cyberspace . . . [:-^]
A Tank Train used to run out of the Port of Albany, NY area. A small 4-track yard to load and unload it was built there in the early 1980’s - perhaps for Cibro Petroleum ? - and still exists, but is now used for ethanol unloading instead. Nevertheless, some Tank Train cars can still be seen in the area, although I have no idea what they are carrying or the route they are running. Here are some of my photos of them at the southern end of the CP/ D&H Kenwood Yard just south of Albany from this past Monday, 06 June 2011 - stenciled as “Leased to GLOBAL COMPANIES LLC”, though that doesn’t mean anything to me at the moment:
Detail photo of connecting hose:
Detail photo of end car - a rare car among rare cars ! - note the overflow/ relief/ sampling (?) pipe arrangement:
I have a few more of these cars from other angles - if anyone is interested, I can post those here, too.
Any help or information on these that anyone can provide - such as the AAR class, mechanical dept. type, build dates, etc. - will be appreciated. Thanks in advance !
The tankcar in the last photograph is placarded for gasoline and has a capacity of 26,704 gallons. The car on the left in the second photograph appears to be a DOT 111A100W-1. If you took a photograph of a consolidation stencil (if I remember the name correctly)(part of it is visible in the lower left corner of your second photograph), then we can get a built date from that. Judging from the saddles (the parts the tank sits on), I would guess the cars were probably built in the 1980s or earlier.
Here is its Albany terminal (Bing is way off on the address), in the process of being switch (pan left). If you pan left until it loads another image, then pan back to the loading racks, you will see the cars at the racks.
Regarding the pipes, I seem to recall reading that when unloading the Oil Cans, they would pipe nitrogen in the opposite end they unloaded the crude to aid in the unloading process. Perhaps that is what the pipes are for.
With the advent of the ethanol transport using a train of single cars, it would seem as a casual observation; The Tank Train concept would be a very useful tool to load and unload a train of those cars. Simply, the utilization of spoting a single car in the Tank Train to load the entire train and then the reverse at destination. That alone would cut down on not only time, but switching costs and their related expenses.
Using that process it would seem that Tank Trains would be a very useful tool to the ethanol industry, reating the rolling pipeline concept.
The only negative that seems to come to mind is one of Rish Management from an Insurance perspective. Wrecking a train of single cars would necessarily limit the amount of product that would be potentially spilled, or even spilled and then burned.
Is this true in the event of the wreck of a Tank Train, or is there plumbing in place on the cars, if in the event of a derailment to stop the cross flow of product between cars in a derailment?
