https://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/27154732507/in/datetaken/

any ideas?

Elden Gatwood

The end view shows what appear to be blocks or clamps that are curved.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/28151421878/in/photostream/
Note also the cross members on the upper framing have curved indentions.
Could this be a car for transporting large round gas canisters or tanks?

Doug Harding
www.iowacentralrr.org

Elden
This was a very early pressure car built by ACF, I expect at Milton, PA.
Your builder's photo shows the car as built in 4-28. The photo I enclose
shows a light weigh date of 5-28 in Bartlesville. The first Phillips
pressure cars were built in 1927 (PSPX 10001-100003) by General American in
Sharon, PA. I am guessing that there was some concern about the operation of
the first three cars (which oddly enough had steam coils.) Perhaps the 1927
cars were in butane service (or one of the lower vapor pressure LPGs) and
the PSPX 20001 was going into propane service, which had a slightly vapor
pressure. This time was in the very early history of the liquefied petroleum
gas effort. The early "oil business" was just that: interest in oil only.
Companies like Phillips who had oil wells that produced a lot of gas, needed
to do something other than flare the gas, so a lot of research went into
uses (and lots of marketing, hence PhilGas signs plastered all over the
Midwest.) A "gas plant" separated the constituents of the gas stream from
the well into methane, which is what we use to heat our houses, make
kilowatts, etc. and everything else. The methane went out the front door via
pipeline and everything else went out the back door via rail, until pipeline
connections could be built. This car would have probably been in service
from a gas plant, such as Burbank, OK, to end use customers: perhaps a Co-Op
who had a tank (maybe a retired tank car sitting on blocks) to store the
butane before its sale to farmers for tractor use. What you see in the later
photo that you don't see in Mr. Barriger's photo is the array of cylinders,
similar to modern chlorine cylinders, that would have held the actual gas.
My reading of the Equipment Registers at the Mercantile Library shows this
car in service from Jan 1929 to July of 1935.
Sorry for the long answer to a short question.
Tom Birkett, Bartlesville, Oklahoma

See also
https://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/27154732507/in/photostream/

J. Stephen Sandifer

Good morning Eldon,

This car has been discussed before…

Check out message #157030 in the archives for a short history by Tom Birkett, that also contains an additional photograph with the canisters loaded.

Cheers,
Bill Keene
Irvine, CA

Tom,
  I'm not sure I understand.  Was this car being used to transport cylinders ... or whatever
was -in- the cylinders?  

  I suspect this car was not in service for very many years - that it would have been
replaced by a tank car quite soon after it went in to service ... sort of a "proof of
concept" approach to transporting propane/what ever by rail.

  Does any one have a date for when tank cars first started being used for propane/etc.?
                                                                                                                  - Jim B.