I was poking around on eBay earlier today and saw a brass two-compartment tank car for sale. While I’ve seen photos of three-compartment tank cars and have 2 of the Tangent 6K gal versions, that’s the first two-compartment I remember seeing.
Q: Would these have been as common or less common than their triple-compartment cousins?
MR did a nice review of the Southern Car & Foundry two-compartment tank car urethane kit back in Dec '09. However, there don’t seem to be any available from either eBay or from the manufacturer’s website. I enjoy unusual models so that would make a nice kit to obtain and assemble - i.e. should I locate one online or at a train show - whenever those get going again.
I have a Sunset brass model of an 8,000 gallon two dome tank car.
Overland imported a very interesting model of a 4,000 gallon two dome tank car. I do not have one of these, but I would like to.
I believe two dome tank cars were a bit of a rarity.
I would really like to know what was hauled in the 4,000 gallon two dome tank car.
This is the 4,000 gallon tank car:
I would also like to have this model. It is a 10,000 gallon insulated two dome tank car built in 1930.
Side note: Not all three dome tank cars had three compartments. A very small specialized few of them were intended to haul commodities with a high expansion rate, and the extra two domes provided space for expansion.
There was an article about this where they pointed out that the O.R.E.R. showed a single compartment tank car, but prototype photographs of the car had three domes. I am certain these were quite the oddity.
Gidday Tom, in my internet research as to how prototypical 2 dome cars were, I came up with very little information, leading me to think that they were the exception rather than the rule.
Here’s the two prototype photos I managed to find…
Having discovered there actually were such things and having come across an article by Brad Smith in the September 1977 Model Railroader on kit bashing a two dome tank car from an Athearn 3 dome, I decided to give it a go!!
RMC had plans and some information on the NATX 4000 gallon car in the April 1989 issue. It was one of a kind, leased to Pennzoil, probably for carrying lube oil.
That’s the same photo that I found, Bear. Thanks for the other one. [:D]
And your Athearn kitbash turned out very well. It’s amazing how squadron putty, metal grabs & ladders, and a lick of paint can spruce up an Athearn BB. [Y]
That is indeed an odd one, Ed. And it appears that the slightly shorter dome is outfitted with some sorta ventiliation spout protruding off to the right.
If memory serves, we discussed this car in the long lost thread “Waldorf And Statlers Photo Of The Day” and I think the special venting was for logging RRs that had very steep grades. I stand to be corrected.
In Ted Culotta’s Steam Era Freight Cars Reference Manual - Volume Two: Tank Cars, there is a wide variety of single-dome tank cars shown, including some under construction.
There are several photos of three-dome tank cars, but only a few of two-dome cars, with the caption under one photo of a 4,000 gallon 2-dome car noting that there was not a great demand for the two-dome type.
The book also shows a couple of six-dome insulated cars, made specifically for carrying wine. The cars are quite long compared to the others, but carried only 1100 gallons in each of their six compartments.
The black 4000 gallon, two compartment tank car imported by Overland Models looks like a model of North American Car Co. (NATX) 18902, which was built in 1960. It was equipped with heater coils and leased to the Pennzoil Co, probably for the transport of different grades of lube oil. It was removed from service in 1983 or 4 and sold to the Tioga Central of New York’s Southern Tier.
An article with photographs and HO scale drawings by Chuck Yungkurth appeared in the April 1989 RMC. Most of these unusual tank cars were built as one, or two car orders. It was Lionel’s two compartment O gauge Sunoco tanker that hastened my departure from American Flyer to HO scale, 65 years ago.
Heater coils? For specialty high-value or high-weight lubricant – which by implication would be used at very high temperature? That makes me think of ultrasupercritical steam turbines, which were becoming a ‘thing’ in electric power generation around that time… Hey Mike Lehman? What were the oil requirements for large deployments of Bomarcs or components of other strategic programs?
This raises another possibility for specialty tanks – high-temperature organic heat/transfer agents. Some applications involved ‘coolant’ that would not boil at 500+ degrees F but that wasn’t a multieffect hazard like NaK. Those would have to travel in ‘industrial quantities’ with fairly competent heaters.
And then there’s the stillborn idea of organic primary coolant in nuclear reactors, as in the experiment at Piqua. There is quite a bit of actual tech information on the Web characterizing the precise nature of the ‘best’ alternatives. That none turned out to be particularly ‘good’ alternatives … after running the reactor at power an interestingly portentous length of time! … does not diminish the usefulness of the idea as an excuse to run a specialty tank car…
In all probability, though, this was for specialty lube for equipment in steelmaking or heavy fabrication. Surely someone will know.
I took a picture of NATX 18902 in an eastbound Conrail train on the ex PRR Connemaugh division in 1981. It was going through Millvale, just outside side of Pittsburgh, Pa.
