No, this is not a new shade of blue close to Prussian blue.
Every once in a while I will see a blue LPG tankcar in the TILX 301000 or UTLX 952000(?) series. Every time I have been able to get close enough to the car to read the lessee, it was leased to Premcor (formerly Clark Refining). Is Premcor now specifying blue for its cars? Are these cars that were formerly, or about to be, leased to Union Carbide or Celtran?
They could be–I’ve also seen blue SHPX tank cars leased to Premcor. All of these cars are recently built, and had no previous lessee.
However, I’ve also seen recently built black tank cars leased to Premcor, so it may be too early to draw conclusions yet.
The Premcor cars, by the way, do not come into “my” territory very often, or I might be able to speak with a little more authority on the subject. Most of my sightings of these cars have been on road trips (I remember catching a bunch on NS in Fostoria once).
Thanks Carl. I forgot about the SHPX cars. Appearently Valero bought out Premcor, I forgot about that too. According to Valero’s website their closests refineries to the Chicago area are in Lima, OH and Memphis, TN. I guess that is why you do not see their cars there often.
Clark had a refinery at Blue Island, Illinois. It was probably shut down for environmental and/or safety reasons.