In the 50’s the Great Northern hauled bulk oil from Montana and western North Dakota to eastern refineries in Minnesota.
I model this period and am working on selectively compressing the GN from Harve, Montana to Minot, ND.
All I have for reference in a BW photo from the GN Historical Society. This picture is from long range and doesn’t show much detail. I don’t plan to build perfectly accurate prototypes (yet) but I would like have enough units to run a 12-15 car train pulled by F Units.
Any suggestions for a reasonable stand-in tank car? History of Montana/Dakota Oil operations from the late 40s/50s?
Most of the oil hauled by the GN was moved in private tank cars(UTLX/SHPX/GATX). In 1962, the GN purchased 50 cars(23,000 gallon capacity) for revenue service. In 1964 the GN puchased another 50 cars(25,000 gallon capacity) for revenue service. These car were in the 100,000 to 100,099 series.
The GN did have a feet of smaller ‘Company Service’ tank cars that varied from 8,000 gallon to 19,000 gallon capacity. These were in the ‘X’ series and were used to haul diesel fuel to engine terminals across the system. These cars were usually painted black with an orange dome. Some of the early ones were painted silver to denote that they carried ‘diesel fuel’ rather than ‘bunker’ oil used in oil fired steam engines. This paint scheme lasted until the steamers were gone, and all of the tank cars were then painted black.
Jim