Here’s my dilemma. I have a fairly long siding that extends to the oil company on my layout. I’ve used the Walther’s “Interstate Fuel & Oil” kit to represent my oil company, which includes 2 tall oil storage tanks and a set of 3 horizontal tanks with off-loading racks to fill up oil delivery trucks. Since the siding is so long, I would like to add an additional structure ahead of the oil company, realizing that any car spotted at this industry will have to be moved, in order to drop a tank car at the oil company. I’d really like to have the new structure become part of the oil company. What I mean is I’d like to expand the oil company to include some other business.
I don’t have room to make it an oil and COAL company because there isn’t enough room for coal bins, etc. I don’t have room for a lumber supply company either, which would be a good adjunct business with the oil. Anyway, I already have a nicely modeled lumber yard in another area of my layout. Essentially, for the new business, I only have room for a building about 3" deep and around 8" long. I have a building that fits nicely, I just don’t know what business it should represent.
So, do any of you guys have any ideas for a companion business that could fit with my oil company?
A long house with 55 gallon drums stacked 3 or 4 high on the ground and bags of chemicals along with small silos holding common chemicals.
You are probably going to want to install a pump shack and run hoses to your track spot locations for your tank cars.
You can do a coal ternimal but branch off your siding with a second track to do it or locate the coal dealer somewhere else.
Be careful here, if you find that you have to move a million cars out of the way and interrupt an industry to switch out a widget company your siding does not serve you or your customers all that well.
One idea is to mkae it a warehouse for drummed and case products (like cases of cans of oil – remember those?) Many speciality oils, esp. lube oils, were shipped in drums. And pallets of cases of oil are need to supply gas stations, auto parts shops, etc. This allows you to ship them into the warehouse in boxcars.
I presume your oil company deals in vehicle and heating fuel.
There are a plethora of petroleum-based products that come in small (box car size) containers - lubricants, solvents, asphalt sealer… A small storage building, possibly with underground or above-ground storage adjacent, would be able to handle them.
What I immediately envisioned was the lube storage facility at Steamtown (the book store, now.) There were an amazing number of DIFFERENT fuels and lube products handled, just to support a steam-era roundhouse and back shops. No reason the same thinking can’t be applied to an industrial lubricant supplier.
There were a couple of oil terminals in my area in the period 1930 - 1960. In addition to the liquids they also blended and packaged lubricants like a grease and oil. This could be represented by a wood frame warehouse type structure with a loading dock, awning, and a couple of doors. Cars would be boxcars, in and out, bringing drums of grease, empty drums and cans, and boxes, and taking packaged products and drums. If you ran piping to the building from some of the tanks this could represent plumbing to the bending area.
Fuel oil eh - how about a different product completely - like a tire dealer. Car, truck, or construction/farm implement tires. Could also make a few interesting flat car loads![2c]
My thanks to Mike, Chuck and KL for their thoughtful input.
Their input was great! I never thought about expanding my oil company to include packaging or distribution of oil in cans or drums. I’ve got several buildings that I’m trying out right now to represent the packaging and storage you guys suggested and I sure have a bunch of oil drums and pallets that will work well.
Ain’t this forum great…expecially when you can get thoughtful responses to a posting like I just got.
Forget the buildings, make that part of the siding a transloading area, kind of like a team track.
Transfer limestone to hoppers from trucks
Just have a truck backup to a box car.
(I found the first photo on the internet but unfortunatly I didn’t save the photo credit: the second photo I took at a Piedmont Division of the NMRA Trainshow. It’s from their Raffle Layout.)
Transfer chemicals from a tank car or hopper to a waiting truck or plastic pellets from a hopper to a truck.
There is an old oil company here in Gainesville Georgia that has what others are describing. It had a siding that went down to the oil tanks, but it also had a warehouse with two doors for box cars. The buildings still remain (and belong to a small oil company), but the siding is gone. I could get pictures of it for you if you think that they would help.
Oh and here is an aerial pic of it. They are the light blue buildings below the junk yard. You can barely make out some oil tanks behind one of the buildings. You can aslo see some of the abandoned buildings in all of those trees to the left that were once part of it.
YOu need a tank or two to hold the stuff. I have one planned where I store the tank cars and let the customer fill out of them once a week. I favor the Atlas 11,000 gallon tank cars for this one. 4 of them should be plenty for this work. All I need is a paperwork shack and a few smaller tanks that go to customers homes and farms.
I thought you might enjoy seeing the results of your input on my layout. I took your advice and added a 2-story building, with offices on the 2nd floor and the first floor will be mixing of lubricants and storgage of boxed oils in cans that arrive in boxcars. The 2 horizontal storage tanks I already had as well as the 2-story building. The 2 little buildings with the oil truck in front of one are from the Walther’s kit 933-2913 called “McGraw Oil Company”. As you can tell from the photo, I really didn’t have enough room for the “Interstate Fuel & Oil Co.” truck loading platform which is why I went to the “McGraw” office/pump house/fuel loading pipes…they take up a lot less room and I think fit in well with my storage tanks and office/warehouse.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy seeing the results of your input.
To expand on what has already been said, many local petroleum distributors “deal” in bulk oils. They buy various oils by the truck load in this case it would be a tank car. The oil is packaged into smaller containers namely 5 gallon cans or 55 gallon drums. But most of the oils are sold in bulk via tank truck to customers who either use it in their own equipment or resell it to their customers. For modeling purposes this might be a good project as the storage tanks are kept in a large heated wharehouse so that the viscosity of th oils can be controlled for pumpability in the winter,
Also you might consider propane and air conditioning. Many distributors have gotten into this fuel as it complements their heating and burner service business and A/C makes them a one stop business for all of one’s heating and cooling needs.
i am going to keep an eye on this thread, seems to have some good information, i too want to add a fuel distrubution centre but don’t know how to get started, this thread has helped,
