This is a wild chase for rare tank car photos.

 

Has anyone seen any photos of tank cars associated with Bradford Oil Refining Company (reporting marks APOX) or Bradford Gasoline Company (BBSX marks)?  These two apparently related companies had a total of 50 tank cars in the mid 1920’s.

 

Thanks for any assistance.

 

Steve Hile

Attachments:

• image001.png

On Mar 18, 2023, at 6:42 PM, Dave Parker via groups.io <spottab@...> wrote:

On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 03:03 PM, Tim O'Connor wrote:

Judging by the graffiti but also because of the hidden car behind it, I think this is
a post-STMFC era photo.

Could well be, but it's very much a steam-era car (note the single rivet rows).  The figure caption implies Alabama Power ownership, but I think this an Anderson-Pritchard Oil Corp car -- it seems to match #258 in the 1955 tariff exactly.

Not that it helps too much with Steve's original query about BBSX and APOX cars in the 1920s.  Ian Cranstone's always-helpful tabulation of reporting marks suggests that APOX may have enjoyed five different uses over the years and, while the first four are all petroleum related, I can't find any connection between Bradford's use (which ended ~1937) and the reappearance of APOX as an Anderson-Pritchard RM in the early 1950s (BTW, Alabama Power's use of the RM didn't come until the 1990s it seems).

And, there is no indication that either Bradford company had any multi-compartment cars at any time.
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Dave Parker
Swall Meadows, CA

This is a wild chase for rare tank car photos.

 

Has anyone seen any photos of tank cars associated with Bradford Oil Refining Company (reporting marks APOX) or Bradford Gasoline Company (BBSX marks)?  These two apparently related companies had a total of 50 tank cars in the mid 1920’s.

 

Thanks for any assistance.

 

Steve Hile

Attachments:

• image001.png

 

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Tim O'Connor
Sterling, Massachusetts

Steve, you probably already know this. This website on the Anderson Pritchard Oil Co https://andersonprichardoil.com/ has a few photos of corporate gifts, including a tankcar model (looks to be HO) https://andersonprichardoil.com/project/corporate-products/. As a corporate gift I would assume the paint scheme is accurate, even it the model is not. But it does not specify if it is an early or late paint scheme. The reporting marks are NATX, from http://freightcars.nakina.net/index.html

A PK2 tankcar kit with APOX reporting marks is on eBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/373028640573

And here is a tankcar painted with what I recall is the actual Apco logo colors from the 60s

Here is a roster of tankcars in 1950 https://jbritton.pennsyrr.com/index.php/tpm/97-interchange-ownership-of-tank-cars-in-1950?fbclid=IwAR1hCQ7Vy2vCFGNwVx44sap0vC3e3nwhCttP7ZfwE9650IEVYmCgIFroqnk

No listing for APOX or BBSX. Makes me suspect the LikeLike car is wearing a post 1960 paint scheme, as I can remember seeing the Apco Oil Co sign when I was a kid, ie the 60s.

And here are some of the signs used by Apco gas stations through the years, which I found on Pinterest. None are black and white, so it appears LifeLike got it wrong most likely from using a b/w photo.

Doug Harding

https://www.facebook.com/douglas.harding.3156/

Youtube: Douglas Harding Iowa Central Railroad

Proto 2000 made an APOX Type 21 tank, but I don’t remember seeing a prototype photo. I vaguely remember that Richard Hendrickson (?) wrote an article about Type 21s in a magazine in the 1980s or 90s

-Phil Lee

On Mar 19, 2023, at 8:52 AM, Bill Parks via groups.io <BPARKS_43@...> wrote:

On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 02:39 PM, Steve and Barb Hile wrote:

These two apparently related companies had a total of 50 tank cars in the mid 1920’s

I'm not sure that these two companies were related, other than both being located in Bradford PA.  I tried to do some digging into them and found that there were several companies in the oil/gas business that had Bradford in their names.  Also, since the instructions for reporting mileage have different addresses, that seems to me to also say they weren't related.

I could not find anything at all about Bradford Gasoline Company.  I did find something very brief about the Bradford County Oil & Gas Company that was founded in 1922, but I don't know if it is the same company or not.

Bradford Oil Refining Company has a bit more information, although some sources contradict others, so not sure what the truth is.  In short, it started in 1881, and became Kendall Oil sometime in either 1920's, or 1930's and merged/acquired another company called Emery in 1935 (which might explain the APOX reporting marks no longer being used in 1937 as Douglass lists in his post).  Through several other acquisitions/mergers over the decades (most after the time frame of this list), the original refinery is now owned by a company called American Refinery Group (ARG) and is the world's oldest refinery of lubricants.
 
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Bill Parks
Cumming, GA
Modelling the Seaboard Airline in Central Florida