I’m about to start painting various detail items for a roundhouse in the early 1920’s, and have a few questions on the appropriate colors…
Welding gas tanks - do the different tanks have specific colors?
Steel oil barrels - are there specific colors (of the middle band?) for different contents?
Or are the colors at the whim of the producer?
Jim
There was much less industrial standardization for that sort of suff a hundred years ago. No OSHA, CalOSHA, etc. Standardization was much more determined by the specific company than now.
Having said that, a great deal of industrialization standardization came from ANSI (American National Standards Institute - founded 1918) and ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers - founded 1880).
In the 1920’s there may have been some standards for colors of welding tanks and such, but they would have been recommendations rather than requirements, and they certainly wouldn’t have been universally adopted at that time.
I’d suggest defining your own “standards” for colors and using them, with other “non-standard” colors thrown in occasionally.
Petroleum barrels were probably most commonly black, with much less consistency from barrel to barrel. You could find white ones, black ones, and other colors, with the only likely “standard” being red for fire barrels. Any of them could have a center band of any color.
55 gal drums were invented around 1900, so in the 1920’s they would still be a fairly new invention and wooden barrels would still be used for many things. Removeable lid drums weren’t invented until 1932.
In the 1980s through the 2000s I worked in heavy equipment repair. We purchase oxygen and acetelyne from two suppliers.
One provided oxygen in green bottles and acetelyne in gray bottles.
The other brought oxygen in gray bottles and acetelyne in yellow bottles.
The propane for our forklifts was always in either gray or silver bottles, always from one supplier.
The labels between the suppliers were the same. Maybe the labelling is the standardized item and not the bottle color.
Maybe this is just another area where Florida plays loosey-goosey with the rules.
-Kevin
I reconditioned and refilled cylinder gases at GE for quite a few years. Our colors used were for a GE standard not for any industry standard.
Cylinder Gases by Edmund, on Flickr
These are specialty gagses made to specific blends so the cylinders are mostly silver with the color bands denoting the mix.
These cylinders have just been painted and will be banded into a fifteen cylinder “skid”. They are for a nitrogen-argon mix.
Nitrogen Cylinder by Edmund, on Flickr
Here is the skid, or bank, of cylinders. These are nitrogen 100%
GEfaceAH_0022 by Edmund, on Flickr
Gas Cylinder Filling by Edmund, on Flickr
For my oxy-acetylene tanks on the layout I like to stick with red for the acetylene and green for the oxygen. It matches the paired hose.
In my observation I’ve seen many oil and chemical drums painted for the “brand” of the product inside. I recall getting oils from Sun Oil in blue drums with a yellow band. Castrol in green drums with a white band and Houghton Chemical in black drums with orange bands, Shell Oil, yellow with red ends and bands. Most other drums were black, brownish red, gree
I didn’t have any idea what colour these containers should be, or even of what they might have contained, so I simply chose a few colours and slapped it on with a brush…
With my luck, some wise guy might show-up one day for a layout visit, and ask why I used the wrong colours…I’ll escort him out the door, of course, but I’m running out of places to get rid of the bodies.
Wayne
I add the ashes of the wise guys to my compost pile… I have the biggest tomatoes you’ve ever seen! [:D]
Jim
Oil Barrels were painted in the colors of the owners so they could easily be returned and refilled.
Texaco…Green, gray ends, gray band
Union 76…Dark blue, orange ends
Shell…Yellow, red ends
Mobil…Red, gray ends and gray band
Chevron/Standard…Blue
Enco/Exxon/Esso…Red, white ends
Richfield…Pale yellow, blue band
Rick Jesionowski
Yes, but nobody likes sour tomatoes.
I seem to recall those colors too. Also, that (sometimes?) the two tanks on the welding dolly are of a different size, if so, what tank would be the smaller one?
Jim
GNR 1905 Burnaby B.C.
Vancouver 1928
There are some barrels in this photo.
The acetylene cylinder is usually the shorter, squat container. It has a porous material inside and the acetylene is dissolved in acetone to stabilize the gas.
I’ve seen natural gas, propane and butane used for cutting torches, too, but acetylene is quite common.
https://mewelding.com/acetylene-cylinders-2/
Cheers, Ed