Did Atlantic Refining also use UTLX cars?  From what little history I could find, Atlantic was a "hidden" subsidiary of Standard at the beginning of the 20th century.

Lou Whiteley
Lawrenceville, NJ




________________________________
From: Anthony Thompson <thompson@signaturepress.com>
To: STMFC@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, October 25, 2009 12:35:52 AM
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Oil industry info sought (steam era- tank cars etc)

 
Gordon (not signing his full name) wrote:

I'm interested in STANDARD OIL and the way they transported oil to
their small town distributors. I know that there was a siding
SPECIFICALLY for a facility which meant that the railroad brought it
in. So some type of tank car was used.
I've yet to find good photos and or drawings of Standard Oil cars
circa 1930-40. Does this mean that Standard Oil didn't have their
own fleet? If that is the case were they using a carrier? I don't
know.

Even after Standard Oil was broken up, UTL continued to supply
tank cars under lease to all the "Baby Standards" around the country.

The fact that there were multiple tanks at the facilty would suggest
that there were possibly multiple products. Did they ship different
products in the same tank car? (I don't know but wonder if that is
why some tanks had multiple domes.

Yes. They typically handled gasoline, kerosene, heating oil,
and other petroleum products probably not shipped in tank cars (engine
oil, greases, etc.). After WW II, they also handled a lot of diesel
fuel, and some handled propane. Multi-compartment cars could help with
low-volume products like lubricating oil, but the true bulk liquids
like gasoline and heating oil were normally full carloads.
I don't know if it's still available but the first volume
in the Kalmbach series on "Industries Along the Tracks" had a nice
article on petroleum dealers. If not for sale new, I'd bet you could
find it used on the web.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress. com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturep ress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

Gordon, a quick look at Sanborn Maps for the towns that interest you, will show the "oil jobbers" were often concentrated in one
area, strung along one track. Typically there were will be a office/storage house about 24'x24' or 24'x30', Standard Oil in the
Mid-West liked stucco and hip roofs, with a concrete platform for loading packaged goods onto trucks. This platform would have two
levels, with steps and a ramp for a hand truck, between the levels. There was a pump house next to the tracks, which could be as
small as 6x6, which connected the unloading pipes at track side to the truck loading stand. The truck loading stand would have a
filler pipe for each bulk product handled: ie gasoline, diesel, distillate, kerosene, fuel oil, usually an hope structure with
just a roof. Then you would have the storage tanks, vertical or horizontal, typically 3-5 tanks. Again a tank for each bulk
product handled. All pipes, valve handles, etc (sometimes even the tanks) were color coded. But the colors varied among the
companies. Today we like to think of red as gasoline, green as diesel, white as kerosene, etc. But this code was no universal.

Standard Oil was forced to break up via anti-trust laws, and sold their fleet of tank cars to UTL, which were plain black tank
cars with minimal lettering.

In HO: Grandt Line has a very nice oil jobber kit based upon a Conoco oil jobber in Colorado with elements from California, ie
their oil storage building. Walthers also sells their "Interstate Fuel" kit which is a more generic oil jobber, with the Quonset
hut storage building.

Doug Harding
www.iowacentralrr.org

Allen Rueter wrote:

The link has a stray period on the end

( http://atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Howard/index.htm)

Well, this one returns "page not found" unless you delete the terminal parenthesis.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

Fq
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

The link has a stray period on the end

( http://atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Howard/index.htm)

--
Allen Rueter StLouis MO

Gordon (not signing his full name) wrote:

I'm interested in STANDARD OIL and the way they transported oil to their small town distributors. I know that there was a siding SPECIFICALLY for a facility which meant that the railroad brought it in. So some type of tank car was used.
I've yet to find good photos and or drawings of Standard Oil cars circa 1930-40. Does this mean that Standard Oil didn't have their own fleet? If that is the case were they using a carrier? I don't know.

Even after Standard Oil was broken up, UTL continued to supply tank cars under lease to all the "Baby Standards" around the country.

The fact that there were multiple tanks at the facilty would suggest that there were possibly multiple products. Did they ship different products in the same tank car? (I don't know but wonder if that is why some tanks had multiple domes.

Yes. They typically handled gasoline, kerosene, heating oil, and other petroleum products probably not shipped in tank cars (engine oil, greases, etc.). After WW II, they also handled a lot of diesel fuel, and some handled propane. Multi-compartment cars could help with low-volume products like lubricating oil, but the true bulk liquids like gasoline and heating oil were normally full carloads.
I don't know if it's still available but the first volume in the Kalmbach series on "Industries Along the Tracks" had a nice article on petroleum dealers. If not for sale new, I'd bet you could find it used on the web.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

Standard Oil used UTLX cars - with a history of common ownership. For more on that, search the archives of the list for UTLX and look for a copy of the book Rockefeller's Secret Weapon.

Rob Kirkham

I'm looking for someone hat has the Railway Age magazine from August 10th,
1935.
Please contact me off the list.
Sincerely,
Richard Yoder

Guys

I have a few photos of a WrightTRAK M53 that Jim King is building so that he can write the instructions for the kit. If anyone would like to see those photo's please let me know and I will be more than happy to send them to you.

Denis Blake

You are talking about bulk oil dealers. STMFC era town of 2000 or more are not complete with them - several of them, often next to each other on the same spur. Many are still there next to tracks or abandoned right-of-way even though no longer rail served. You can Google search for pictures and find a few. There are a number on the Santa Fe website at http://atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Howard/index.htm.
Eureka had 5 bulk oil dealers. Emporia had 6.

______________
J. Stephen (Steve) Sandifer
mailto:steve.sandifer@sbcglobal.net
Home: 12027 Mulholland Drive, Meadows Place, TX 77477, 281-568-9918
Office: Southwest Central Church of Christ, 4011 W. Bellfort, Houston, TX 77025, 713-667-9417

Based on an article in the Oct. 1992 RMC, I built an Erie storage mail box. It involved cutting down an Intermountain 1937 box to 1932 dimensions, sanding off the ribs on the end, and then fashioning new ribs from styrene. The Buckeye (?) ends were easier to do than many others. I also had to fashion new side doors, add vertical brake gear, etc. It got 88 in the Lone Star Region NMRA convention.


______________
J. Stephen (Steve) Sandifer
mailto:steve.sandifer@sbcglobal.net
Home: 12027 Mulholland Drive, Meadows Place, TX 77477, 281-568-9918
Office: Southwest Central Church of Christ, 4011 W. Bellfort, Houston, TX 77025, 713-667-9417

Jack,

Several years ago I searched high and low but failed to learn how
to make dry transfer decals. Based on your comments, I would
guess you find decals today superior to dry transfers?

I've got Photoshop, AutoCAD and Corel Draw but haven't yet
attempted to make decals with any software. I think I would go
with Corel, but I'm paying close attention to what all of you
with decal-making experience have to say.

Thanks much,

Brian

Brian Chapman
Evansdale, Iowa

Actually, I was invited by Charles Williams (who later become one of the
founders of Detail Associates) to join he and some other modelers on a run
of custom dry transfers about 40 years ago. The only way to do it in those
days was with pen and ink, drawing the artwork at probably 4X. The resulting
dry transfers were fine and I had no problem using them (except on
single-sheathed box cars or other cars with ribs or stake pockets) but...1)
a number of other YV modelers kept asking for decals for modeling YV
equipment, and 2) over the years, I was able to collect more and more photos
of the YV which allowed me to produce even more accurate artwork.

One of the biggest breaks was finding a photo which was nearly a perfect
side view of the tender of a YV engine. I scanned that photo at 1200 dpi and
opened it in Photoshop. I cropped the photo to just the lettering and
eliminated the little bit of perspective and keystoning by Selecting All and
then using Edit/Transform/Skew...opening a grid helps ensure things are
level and square. I inverted the image (Image/Adjustments/Invert) to produce
black lettering on a white background. I then lightened the background and
darkened the lettering with Image/Adjustments/Brightness Contrast. Any dust
dots or white spots can be removed with the eraser or by filling holes in
the lettering with black poured from the Paint Bucket. You can measure the
height of your lettering with the Measure Tool (hidden under the Paint
Dropper). Zoom in tight and measure the height in real inches. Figure out
the height you need for 2X lettering and adjust the size of the Image by the
required percentage calculation.

Making stencils for lettering existing prototype YV cars is more critical
and I have used lettering views corrected in Photoshop to remove any
distortion and then imported those photos into CAD (I prefer CAD since I am
more capable in CAD than in Illustrator) and used the drawing tools to
develop the needed outlines. Sometimes you might have most of the lettering
but a letter is distorted. You might be able to cut and paste that letter in
from somewhere else to solve the problem. For "YOSEMITE VALLEY", I obviously
draw only a single E and then use that E to make an L, etc. The height of
lettering can sometimes be compared to known board widths, etc.

To get my CAD work into Photoshop to provide it to the decal shop is
convoluted but works. I work in AutoSketch rather than AutoCad which means
that I draw in a particular scale (such as HO scale but with prototype
dimensions) rather than in "real size". So...after a couple of other steps,
I add a box 8" long to the drawing and export it as a .dxf file. That file
can be opened in Illustrator (and possibly Corel Draw). When the file opens
in Illustrator, I'll check the width of the box and enlarge or reduce the
size of the entire drawing as needed to result in the box being 8" wide.
That gets my drawing rescaled in Illustrator. I can then increase the size
by 200% to result in 2X HO decals. After setting the line widths, I export
the drawing as a .tif file which can be opened in Photoshop. In Photoshop, I
delete the box and fill the lettering outlines with black, resulting in the
final 2X drawing. I have Rail Graphics print all of my decals.

I know that Illustrator has an Auto Trace feature but I've never had much
luck using it. (I have no patience and hate to read guide books.) But even
it I could get a reasonable auto trace, I would still need to manipulate the
handles and I haven't had much experience in doing that except for hand
tracing maps.

There might be easier ways but I have used these methods to produce decals
for every piece of YV equipment which ever existed and full-size stencils
for caboose 15 (on display at El Portal), Observation 330 (owned by a friend
of mine) and RPO 107 (at Niles Canyon Railway but not yet repainted and
correctly lettered)...I sell the decals to other YV modelers through my
website...

Jack Burgess
www.yosemitevalleyrr.com

Allen:

It looked like the scheme on the Tangent cars. That is the as-built paint
scheme.



Brian J. Carlson, P.E.

Cheektowaga NY



From: STMFC@yahoogroups.com [mailto:STMFC@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Allen Rueter
Sent: Saturday, October 24, 2009 7:27 PM
To: STMFC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re: Tangent Scale Models: NEW HO ACF 70-ton welded
drop-end Gondola available now!!





I wonder what the initial paint scheme on the PRR gons looked like.

--
Allen Rueter
StLouis MO

________________________________

Forty years ago, I hand drafted artwork to make dry transfers for all of the YV equipment . . . and have since scanned that artwork and manipulated it in Photoshop to provide artwork for decals. . . . CAD drawings were also used to produce HO (and O scale) decals. <

Jack,

Several years ago I searched high and low but failed to learn how to make dry transfer decals. Based on your comments, I would guess you find decals today superior to dry transfers?

I've got Photoshop, AutoCAD and Corel Draw but haven't yet attempted to make decals with any software. I think I would go with Corel, but I'm paying close attention to what all of you with decal-making experience have to say.

Thanks much,

Brian

Brian Chapman
Evansdale, Iowa

I made an Erie Express Box a number of years ago and had to scratchbuild these ends, and I think mine look much close to the original. <

Steve,

I have it in mind to do some scratchbuilding in an "off" scale, would much appreciate learning how you went about accurately scratchbuilding ends. Thanks much,

Brian

Brian Chapman
Evansdale, Iowa

List,

Was billboard lettering a common scheme on W&LE caboose cars, and would it have been seen in the early 1950's ? Secondly, was this lettering ever applied to loco tenders? Thanks in advance.

Fred Freitas

I wonder what the initial paint scheme on the PRR gons looked like.

--
Allen Rueter
StLouis MO




________________________________

Tim O'Connor wrote:

Accurail makes excellent replacement box car floor/underframes for postwar AAR 40 and 50 foot box cars.

I may be losing the thread here, but the Athearn boxcar bodies are pre-war bodies.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

Joel

May I suggest the book "Quincy Route ("A History of the Quincy, Omaha and Kansas City Railroad & the Iowa and St Louis Railway") by Michael R Johns with Ralph Cooper, published by Milestone 208 Publications, P O Box 225, Chillicothe, MO 64601

Rupert Gamlen
Auckland NZ