Show Me Your Oil Tankers

K-line, I like the blue.

I like tank cars. Several years ago, my aged neighbor who had been an O scale model railroader since the 1930’s-1940’s gave me this brass tanker which needed painting and repairs. He loved the SP, so last year, in his memory, I finally got around to fixing it and lettering it for the Southern Pacific.

@Brad J posted:

K-line, I like the blue.

I thought I was the only one who liked Big Sky Blue.  I too have that tank car, got it through the K-Line Collectors Club.

These 3 dome tank cars are by MTH, from their Railking line. While I haven’t scoured this thread, I don’t recall seeing any MTH 3 dome tanks previously. This pair has a somewhat interesting story. Not released as open stock, they are components of Ready to Run NYC set, 30-4046-1, and 6 car NYC freight set, 30-7014. The car ending in 01, from 30-7014, is somewhat scarcer than 04.
The little guys were artfully hand painted by Ron045.

Well this one I just had to add to my collection, although I have some less perfect examples of it already.  I discovered this at a local train show just 2 weeks ago and as a "tank-a-holic" collector it had to come home with me.  This is the Lionel expensive tank car, all metal tank, die cast frame etc from the immediate post war period.  This specific one has the "GAS/SUNOCO/OIL" letters all within the yellow diamond and the decal on the left has rectangular corners. It has a die cast frame marked with the 2955 part number and the small diamond shaped placard holder on the frame rail.   It has the Type 3B trucks with coil couplers activated with sliding shoes which date it to 1947 or 76 years ago!  To me, the condition of this ancient warrior is really something else.  Except for a few small missing areas on the lower part of the left hand decals, its condition is near perfect.  Where has it been for 76 years???

Anyway, here is my LN Lionel 2555 tank car from 1947.

Best wishes tanker fans!

Don

@Don McErlean Don….tanks a lot for sharing this beauty.

@Rich Wiemann- Rich thanks for your compliment.

Don

Nice, Don; here's a couple hard-to-find prewar oil tankers:

Don, did you need a trailer to get your haul home from that train show.

The Hardy Toll Road in Houston has quite a few UP lines between the northbound/southbound lanes, taking stuff from the Houston Ship Channel to wherever.  Tank cars and cylindrical hoppers constitute well over 50% of the cars on the trains.

On my last 2 trips on that road I saw several tank cars with no domes.  They looked like a regular domed tank car, but they had no domes.  I'm not sure what they were carrying.  Has that type of tank car been produced for model railroading?

A string of Marx H0 Rocket Fuel tank cars just finished unloading for tonight’s launch.

Steve

@coach joe- Ha!  You know a trailer might have helped.  It was my first show in quite awhile between personal business taking up time and COVID cancelling the shows so I guess I went a bit "overboard"...it was great fun however, we have another coming up the end of Sep so maybe I get that trailer for that one

@pd- thanks for the comment on my "new" 2755 tanker !

@Steve "Papa" Eastman - Steve great display of Marx HO tankers, I wish he had made some of those colors in his 0 gauge Rocket Fuel tanker but we ended up with just white (but had both 4 and 8 wheel).

Thanks for the comments Joe

Don

@coach joe posted:

Don, did you need a trailer to get your haul home from that train show.

My car when returning from a Strasburg meet:

To keep on the topic, in that white plastic bag on the left are two tankers. Note, they are still in that bag nine years later! Although no longer in the trunk of the car.

Well I continue my quest for neat looking tank cars and recently I added two, so I thought I would open up Arnold's post on tank cars and just add them into the mix.

First is the Lionel #81200 Timken "chemical" type tank car from 2014 - 2016 . An auction buy for me and NIB despite being nearly 10 years old.

Now on the other end of the spectrum, this is a lithographed, tin plate tanker (all metal no plastic) by Marx from the immediate post war period.  It has metal (not plastic, tilt fork couplers hence it pre-dates the introduction of plastic in 1953).  It is from the Marx 3/16" scale line that started just before the war (1942) and ran until the middle 50's although its peak seems to have been around 1948 with the tinplate cars.  A little unusual in that it has Type D (Greenberg system) trucks as opposed to the "scale" type trucks.  These trucks consist of a stamped steel side frame embossed with the outline of suspension parts and journal boxes.  This one also has the blackened wheels of pre-war models so it was likely an early post war release.  Almost nothing in Marx is really rare but this tanker took me a long time to find in even this shape - which I would grade as "Good".  So from 1945 - 1953 approximately here is the tinplate Cities Service Tanker from Marx.

Well best wishes, hope you had a wonderful Holiday

Don