I am thinking about putting in an oil industry on my layout. the situation is it’s the late 1970’s (anywhere from 77-79) and there would be oil pumped out of the ground to the facility, to be moved to a refinery (I’m sure you all know that how that part works, but I thought it might make a difference on what type of car). So what cars in HO scale will I need? Depending on size I would only need 3 or4. Thanks for any help.
When you say oil industry are you talking refinery or a fuel oil company such as a lot of towns have for home heating oil and the like. If your talking oil refinery I can’t speak as an expert but I worked in the Exxon refinery here in Linden , NJ for a while and all of our pipping was above ground. I actually asked my foreman if any of the pipes were under ground and he said not in this place. Imagine if you had a leak in a pipe under ground, A: you wouldn’t see it until way too much time had passed and once you did find it imagine what would be involved in repairing it. That why we have monkey’s like you to walk the line checking for leaks. Trust me watching paint dry would be more interesting.
Here’s a picture of a very nicely done moderately sized oil refinery and a link to his web page maybe you can get some answers there.
http://www.midwestnpioneer.org/oldsite/central/refinery.html
The Walthers 23,500 gallon tankcars would work. The Atlas 23,500 gallon ACF tankcars would probably work. However I am not sure it the prototype existed back then. It probably did, but I am not sure.
“I am thinking about putting in an oil industry on my layout. the situation is it’s the late 1970’s (anywhere from 77-79) and there would be oil pumped out of the ground to the facility, to be moved to a refinery (I’m sure you all know that how that part works, but I thought it might make a difference on what type of car).”
My study of the oil industry in Texas in the 1950s showed comparatively little crude oil moving from wellheads of refineries in railroad tankcars. 1957 figures from the Texas Railroad Commission show “only” 17 thousand tankcar loads of crude petroleum moved that year, compared to almost 50 thousand carloads of gasoline, 450 thousand carloads of other refined petroleum products.
Those products moved by rail to county-level bulk oil dealers:
from which it would go by truck to individual service stations within a 25 to 50 mile radius. Refiners owned or leased cars with their brand names boldly emblazoned.
Here is my model of a tankcar which might be found at a refinery-- a company service tankcar. I understand they had a fuel contract with Texaco. Very likely usually contracted with a refinery on their own line.
Almost ANY tank car lettered for a railroad will be IN COMPAN Y SERVICE. Railroads did not usually supply tank cars for customers.Here are some references to published photos, scale drawings, information on tank cars which might service a refinery. Some are oil company cars, others are cars of suppliers to refiners…AMOX 9216 1 dome 1967 pix SF Trackside w/ Bill Gibson,p.75 1971 Eqpt Reg lists American Oil Co. AMOX 9030-9464 TM A
Yesterday, I posted references to published photos, scale drawings, information on tank cars with reporting marks beginning A through E. I keep these in several “Word” files, with spaces etc. between entries. However, when I copy these into the trains.com forums, although it shows the spacing on the compose page, it kicks out the spaces and jumbles the entries All together when actually displayed. It does NOLT do this when I compose a post by typing directly, and I do not have that problem on any other forum.Perhaps if I enter several iterations of the “underline” character, the entries will have some visual separation that the forum program will not kick out. Today’s tank car information is for cars with reporting marks (or owner’s names) F through M._____________________________________________________________GATX 33634 blt 1946 DOT103W TMI dome,insulated used to ship brake fluid to in 1970s
Today’s tank car information is for cars with reporting marks (or owner’s names) N through S. I am going to make another try at getting individual items to appear of different lines instead of all jumbled together.
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NATX 18600 North American Car Line, leased to Pennzoil 3 dome 6000 gallon tank not list6ed 54 Reg proto pix RMC Aug89
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NATX 18902 North American Car Line, leased to Pennzoil 4000 gallon 2 dome small diameter tank blt 1960 but dimensions said to resemble older tank, tank dia 4’10", rounded end. dome dia 4’, prot pix & drawings RMC Apr89 p.68 ;