Friends,

After a long break for other interests, I have returned to trains and
rejoined this group. It will be great to become reacquainted with old
friends, and make some new ones.

So I'm sitting here looking at a Walthers tank car. When I cleared out
my Athearn-quality cars years back I kept this car. I figured it would
be good to have a dozen or so "expendable" cars that guests or kids
could run on my layout and not cause me to have a coronary if they were
damaged, and at that time I was building a portable layout to take to a
now-defunct train show I often attended. Besides, it is a Sinclair car,
and my sweetheart is a Sinclair by descent. She always liked this car,
and it never hurts to score points with one's spouse.

I know the tank scales out to about 11K gallons and the dome is
oversized. What intrigues me is the underframe and tank saddles. Is the
underframe close to any prototype, especially one not done with more
quality by the IM or Proto cars? I'm wondering if anyone has ever
considered shimming the saddles and dropping a more prototypical tank
onto this underframe to get something a bit different. Detailing on the
frame itself is a bit clunky, but the corner steps, and some of the rods
and piping, could be replaced by wire for a layout-quality car.

Thoughts? Ideas? Raspberries?

Yours Aye,

Garth Groff