Model Railroading > Where are all the tank car models?

Rather than tool up yet another F-unit.....

I'm a member of a club that is currently examining our fleet as we crank up operations and we are in need of modern era tank cars.

We have enough of the big whale-belly 33,000 gallon tanks in our fleet for our LPG facility. Specifically, we are looking for tank cars that would haul asphalt, diesel fuel, chemicals for the paper and plastics industries and other misc. stuff in 1979.

From the looks of things, the pickings are pretty slim without resorting to eBay or garage sales. This is what I've found thus far:

Easiest to find are the Athearn blue box heritage tanks. The single dome is an early riveted design not built much after WW2. The three-dome tank is the same, except the prototype was fairly rare. The chemical tank can pass for a 1950s or 1960s model, but the platform is pretty chunky.

Intermountain / Red Caboose have beautiful 8,000 and 10,000 models but again these are pre WW2 prototypes.

MDC used to have the tank train funnel flow car, but that has become pretty hard to find anymore. My understanding is that Athearn isn’t going to re-run this one.

Atlas has done some runs of various sized more modern frameless tanks that would work perfectly on our 1979-era layout for asphalt, diesel and chemicals. The Atlas 11,000 gallon tank is also a bit early for 1979. But for some reason all the Atlas tanks cars are produced in smallish runs and very sporadically. I wonder why – they are really nice looking cars and don’t have any competition.

There seems to be a big hole when it comes to tanks cars that were built in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. While the latest wave of tanks from Walthers and Athearn are really nice models, they are much more modern prototypes, like the ethanol cars. We’ve been blessed with many manufacturers producing new models of a lot of boxcar and covered hoppers in recent years. But new tank car models for the 60’s and 70’s (that are still in service today) are nowhere to be found. Sounds like a market opportunity to me.

And can we please get tank car model paint schemes WITHOUT the yellow reflector stripes on the side? They represent a fairly small time period, from about 2005 on. Even older prototypes are produced with current-era corporate logos and reflector stripes.

My suggestion is for Atlas / Athearn / Walthers to do some runs of plain-jane UTLX / ACFX / SHPX black tanks. You know - the ones we see all the time and can be used to haul a multitude of commodities.

What to you guys think?

OK – off my soapbox for now…

- Norm

I hear you. I'm planning to represent 1990, so all the tank cars with the conspicuity stripes are worthless to me. Athearn's latest production runs of its sulphuric acid and general-service tank cars, while promoted as appropriate for my era, almost all have lettering setting them mid-90s or later. Atlas' cars are beautiful but they don't make many of them and for these, in particular, they eschew producing multiple numbers like they release for most of their other models. While I'd obviously be happy with tank cars with 80s markings that wouldn't satisfy you, I basically have the same request: plain-jane black tank cars used for asphalt, chemicals, and the like.

I'd also like to see more 70s/80s plain-jane plastic-pellet cars for companies like Mobil Chemical (MOBX), Amoco, and Exxon.

But what I've been told by dealers is that plain-jane cars -- whether tanks, plastics hoppers, grain cars, or whatever -- are poor sellers to the mass market.

It used to be modern tankcars were scarce, but that is not the case now. Granted some cars are just too new for your 1979 era, but most of the cars produced by Atlas and Walthers will fit that era. Below is a list of car models good for 1979

Athearn Blue Box
62' tankcar, used for railroad fuel service even today
40' chemical tankcar, still several floating around in during the 80's and 90's

Athearn RTR
8,000 NACC "Beercan" tankcar, built in the 60's
13,600 acid tankcars, first built in the late 70's
20,900 Acid Tankcar
20,900 General Service tankcar, built in the 60's and 70's
33,900 LPG Tank, (the style with the short platform)

Athearn Genesis
20,000 GATX General Service Tankcar, another great 60's and 70's tankcar, due in 2011

Atlas
11,000 Chemical Tankcar, still a few floating around in the 70's and 80's
14,000 Kaolin tankcars, 70's built
17,360 Chemical tankcar, 70's built
20,700 General Service tankcars, 60's built
23,500 GS tank, 70's and 80's built
33,000 Whalebelly tankcar, 60's built

Walthers
16,000 40' Modern Funnel Flow tankcar, A good 70's era car for Corn Syrup and Kaolin Clay Slurry
23,000 54' Modern Funnel Flow Tankcar, 70's built Vegetable Oil/ Petroleum products tankcar
33,000 65' Tankcar, 70's built LPG tankcar


I've excluded several cars built in the 80's and later. So there are 16 models painted in numerous schemes useful in your era.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

funnelfan Wrote:
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> Athearn RTR

> 33,900 LPG Tank, (the style with the short
> platform)

From reading Athearn's own materials on this one, I thought even their short-platform LPG tank was only good for 1993-onward (which is why I haven't bought any).

I agree with you, Ted, that the selection of tank cars from all eras is much better than it was even 10 years ago. But it seems like Atlas, in particular, is under-producing its older cars, and Athearn is focusing on newer paint schemes for many of its cars, too. I suspect this is at least partly because there are more prototype photos from the current day upon which to base decorations than there are from either the late 1970s or the late 1980s/1990.

If enough of you ask for them, somebody will make them.

My layout has 3 out of the 6 business I model are tank cars, I use all kinds, I have found the Athearn RTR modern tank car awesome, the atlas cars, I have 7 of these are of an older production built tank cars, that are still in service today. I also have 7 Walthers 16K tank cars.

when looking for tank cars, for asphalt, I would want to use 20900 gal cars, as that is what I see rolling around here at the Asphalt download. Most tank cars I see are around 20K and for Fuels, more like 30K, and LPG are 33K+.

Athearn seems to be on the ball, these tank cars roll beautiful well detailed, are more prototypical for the cars I see around today.

when trying to get tank car correct for a business is not that easy, there are many types of tank cars, and very few produced in HO scale.

toledopatch Wrote:
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> funnelfan Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Athearn RTR
>
> > 33,900 LPG Tank, (the style with the short
> > platform)

Supposedly for 1992 to present, but then Athearn went and produced cars built in 1996 for the "early" versions ... which falls after the pre-BNSF merger-Santa Fe that I'm modeling.

They did slightly better on the new flat-side 33.9K LPG cars, with a number series built in 1992. However, they included the red and white "Non-Odorized" sticker near the commodity stencil, which I don't ever recall see being applied to the prototypes until the past couple of years. Why they lncluded those stickers, when all the other information was era-correct, is a bit baffling.

I consider myself very fortunate that Atlas has produced the Trinity 25,500 gal tank car, which allows me to model the exact three number series of GATX cars that served a distillery in Baltimore that will be on my future layout. The car below is one of them (sorry for the out-of-focus photo - my camera settings were off and the car surprised me). All I have to do is make a minor modification to the undecorated GATX version of the car and have some custom decals made. Although Atlas produced this scheme, I want to make the cars an exact match for this industry. There's another group of seven cars that would require more significant modifications that I may attempt after building these.

I whole-heartedly agree that manfacturers should do a better job of balancing older and newer paint schemes in a production run. Atlas is pretty good about it, but Athearn needs some work (plus a lot of their lettering is way off on those recent LPG cars). I'm not sure why some manufacturers don't see to understand that a car built in the '70s can be used by modelers for the '70s up til the present day, while a prototype built in 2005 is only good for someone modeling the last 5 years. Seems like a pretty easy business decision when choosing a prototype, but I'm not a business major...

Dave

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Some survivors who've made it into the digital era (post 2000).

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

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It's not only tank cars, passenger cars are getting hard to find also, ed