I have seen in past posts occasionally where someone refers to a field guide or some other authoritative catalog in answering a question about a style of boxcar or tank car or flatcar, such as whether this style would have existed in the '30s or whether that style would still be in use in the '70s. I keep seeing models for sale of this Jack Frost Sugar Cane car and I like it a lot.
How would I find out when it started appearing on the rails? What book would tell me? I found the AAR’s Field Guide To Tank Cars, but that was more like a specification. I’m looking for a very well illustrated history that is likely to include a lot of portraits of tank cars with advertising on them.
If I were looking to establish a reference library on tank cars, the first two acquisitions would be Morning Sun’s “Tank Car Color Guides” Volumes 1 and 2. These two 128 page, all color, hardbound books, divided by whether or not the car has a center sill are ISBN 1-58248-311-6 and, ISBN 1-58248-322-1 respectively. Because color film didn’t become affordable enough to use in recording “ordinary” freight cars until after World War II, there aren’t many prewar cars included. Both books were copyrighted in 2010 and 2011, making it simple to deduce the time span they cover.
Morning Sun makes the effort to provide infomative captions containing such information as car builder, gallonage, when and where photographed, use, and sometimes, the number of like cars in the group or order. Like any human endeavor, errors do creep in occasionally but, the photograpfs don’t lie.
Two more books, by Signature Press, “American Car & Foundry, 1899-1999” and, “Tank Cars, American Car & Foundry Company, 1865-1955” are also useful although they are narrower in scope, addressing the cars of only ACF. Because of the time span covered, black-and-white photographs are predominate although both books have color sections. Along with corporate history, shop locations and such, the photo captions provide the number of cars in the order, reporting marks and number series, ICC car type designation, as well as capacity in gallons and tons. Unlike other car types, the number of single car orders is astounding! Also of interest is the number of cars from competitors that wound up as second hand purchases by ACF’s leasing arm, Shipper’s Car Line (SHPX). American Car & Foundry, 1899-1999 is ISBN 0-9633791-0-0, and Tank Cars, American Car & Foundry, 1864-1965 is ISBN 1-930013-09-4.
To my recollection I don’t think there is one. Some will argue with me but the railroads themselves owned very few tank cars. Either the shipper or a leasing company owned most of the can fleets. Unlike other cars, tank cars are mostly a single commodity unit. You get zero backhaul out of a tank car.
If there is a particular car your interested in. Try researching the company that owned it. They may have photos or drawings of the artwork. I wish I could help you more.
Thanks Guys. Pete, great information and a good idea. I’ve actually learned a lot today about Jack Frost (a.k.a. The National Sugar Refining Company) and it’s rival, Domino. They were both around a very very long time.
NHTX, I was just at a model railroaders’ swap meet where there were hundreds of old books for sale, but at that moment I was focusing on other items. My LHS has boxes of musty old tomes – I’ll be he has some of those you mentioned.
And for most of those cars’ lives, the placard would have been white or manila with a red “dangerous” across the face. The red flammable/combustile placards didn’t happen until the 1970’s.
I only have two tank cars. One is a custom club car painted and lettered for cranberry juice. The other is a PRR company service car for steam oil. It has the buff colored S inside the white square on the left end of the side denoting a non revenue car for company business. If there was anyone that used a lot of steam oil, it was the Pennsy. It’s small compared to other tank cars of the era. I believe it’s a 7000 gallon tank.
One of these days I will get my rolling stock out of storage. On the shelf in the workshop there are a pair of Proto riveted tank car kits that are about twenty years old and not opened.
Kevin, those models are so beautifully done, I think no one on earth would fault you for invoking Rule #1 in their case. I would put all five of those on my own layout and by way of an excuse I’d say they were a recent purchase that hadn’t been repainted yet.
I painted the placards white on my HO tank cars, in lieu of actual decals for most of them. BTW, I have two official placards for propane & residue (tank bottoms) that I got while visiting a Mobil Oil underground storage facility in Hattiesburg, Ms.
