Weathering really big tank cars

As part of the weathering project I mentioned in an earlier post about Rapido models of Pacific Car & Foundry 70-ton box cars, I also agreed to take a crack at weathering some 33,000-gallon tank cars. (You can read the previous post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/08/another-weathering-project.html .) Tank cars of this size were quite an advance when introduced in 1962, as “stub-sill” tank car designs were approved for use. This meant no center sill. 

A pioneer in building these cars was American Car & Foundry, with what was called a “whale belly” design. The stub sills carried the narrower part of the tank, and the center section was enlarged to the maximum clearance diagram. The AC&F demonstrator of the design is shown below (AC&F photo, courtesy Ed Kaminski), riding on 100-ton trucks.

Substantial numbers of these cars were built, usually with capacities of around 33,000 gallons. But before long both AC&F and North American Car decided that the more complex fabrication of this design wasn’t necessary, and after about 1965 or so, both builders had changed back to “straight barrel” designs. But the whale-bellies continued in service for many years.

These cars were built to carry Liquified Petroleum Gas, and thus are often called LPG tank cars. For a short time in the 1960s, even larger  cars, up to 60,000 gallons, were on the rails. But in 1970, the DOT instituted a maximum gallonage limit of 34,500 gallons. 

Tangent Scale Models produced ready-to-run models of the North American Car whale-belly cars in HO scale. Here is one of the cars, emblazoned with a huge logo, as were many of the cars. You may note it has neither ACI label nor a COTS or lube stencil. When the cars were built, neither of those was yet introduced. But for the layout where these cars will run, set in 1975, both need to be added. 

The other model is below. These two cars have 1964 and 1965 built dates. That makes them 10 years old in 1975, so they can receive significant weathering, once I have added ACI and COTS. 

I give Tangent high marks for including in the delivery boxes of the models, small photos showing where to put the ACI label for each car. Also visible is the location and type of lube stencil. I should note that the LP Gas photo is from 1980, thus more heavily weathered than appropriate for 1975. 

I resorted to an ancient Microscale decal set to obtain ACI labels and lube stencils. I proceeded with normal decal application. Shown below is the Pacific 66 tank with these applied. The lube stencil looks non-vertical because it is on a slanting part of the tank (compare the photo above). My first weathering pass is also visible here, though more needs to be done.

I now proceeded with weathering of these two models. They are so large that I found I needed more than one session on each tank, a minimum of once per side. But I will show those results in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

Waybills, Part 132: warehouses

A month or so ago, I posted the second of two blog essays on switching layouts (the most recent was called “Pratt Island,” and it is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/07/pratt-island.html ). My subject today is a question I received by email, asking about an aspect of that post. 

(I might also mention a preceding article of the same kind, making some of the same points; it’s at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/03/designing-switching-layout.html .) 

What the question was about was my mention in both posts about the usefulness of warehouses as industries. Now of course any sizeable industry may include a warehouse among its buildings, for shipping, receiving or both. But the question wasn’t about that. It was about businesses solely working as warehouses. 

There was a time when such businesses were widespread.  Here’s a single example, the Harborside Warehouse in New Jersey, right across from Manhattan. The image is from the back cover of the 1953 Official Guide.  You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.

The ad notes that they provide rail-water connections, including lighters to ships, to other railroad piers, and to Manhattan, as well as direct rail service from the Pennsylvania. They can offer storage, transshipment and distribution. So freight sent here might be en route to Manhattan, destined to a ship for overseas destinations, or held for later movement onward. 

Harborside does not seem to have provided drayage also, but that was a common component of warehouse businesses, thus offering pickup and delivery. Then the business name might include “van and storage,” or “transfer and storage,” or sometimes “storage and trucking.” 

For examples, one can consult any railroad “Shippers Guide.” A valuable source is Rails Unlimited, who offer, for example, a very nice Chicago & North Western Shippers’ Guide (cover shown below). You can see a write-up about it (and the other 25 Guides available) at: https://railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/Books/shippers.html . 

In this guide, for example, we can look under warehouses. Here is part of page 587, including the Twin Cities. Any of these warehouse names could become destinations on a waybill. 

Choosing one of these warehouses, a waybill like that below might be created for my layout: 

For an even bigger city, we might consider Chicago. One very comprehensive Shippers Guide that includes Chicago is that for the B&O (also available from Rails Unlimited), as I’ve described before (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/01/another-excellent-shippers-guide.html ). Here is the beginning of the B&O warehouse listing: 

One could readily repeat the process just described for the shipment to St. Paul, using any of these names. The versatility of a storage and transfer destination is obvious, and I intend to expand my use of these as destinations. Modelers of big cities can use warehouses as origins, too.

Tony Thompson 

HO construction equipment, Part 2

In the preceding post to this one, I showed some very nice HO scale models of International-Harvester construction equipment that I undertook to weather for a friend. In that post I showed some prototype views to indicate how such equipment can look after time in service. You can view the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/08/ho-scale-construction-equipment.html . The models were made by First Gear (see their website at: https://firstgearinc.com/diecast-replicas/ ).

I’ll begin with the smallest of the three vehicles, the I-H model 175. As mentioned previously, it has a ROPS cage (Roll Over Protection Structure), and a ripper at the rear. When the loader bucket and ripper are used, the teeth quickly become bare steel, and that’s been added. Tracks become a grayish “dirty steel” appearance. Overall brownish grime was added also, but the unit does not appear too old.

For comparison, here is a similar-sized vehicle from Caterpillar, somewhat different ROPS and a rear winch. Color and degree of dirt, and appearance of tracks, are useful to see (Cam Thompson photo).

The next model, the TD-25 bulldozer, also has a ROPS and ripper. A new, out of the box view was shown in the first post (linked in the first paragraph, above). Here again, the ripper teeth and the bottom edge of the blade would be bare steel after even a little use. Weathered separately from the model 175 shown above, the TD-25 has a little greater degree of grime. 

The third model is a different use of the basic TD-25 model, being equipped with a side boom and a rear winch. On the opposite side from the boom are counterweights (like many parts of the prototype that would be moveable, they are moveable on the model). This is apparently a rare model from First Gear, as it commands impressive prices on the internet. Here is a view of the model when new.

Weathering this model was approached slightly differently. Tracks were still changed to a “dirty bare steel” look, but a more grayish grime and dust was applied to the overall vehicle. Most other details were handled in a similar way to the other two models . 

This was an interesting project, both to learn about the prototype machines and to view some weathered prototypes. It’s been interesting.

Tony Thompson 

More of Rapido’s new 1937 AAR box cars

Recently I reported on two of the new 1937 AAR-design box cars in HO scale, both of them Canadian cars, as it happened (you can view that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/08/rapdios-new-1937-aar-box-cars.html ). Today I want to report on two others.

But first I have to mention the magisterial volume with phenomenal coverage of the 1937 cars, Patrick C. Wider’s monumental 384-page opus, Railway Prototype Cyclopedia, Volume 35 (Silverlake Images, 2020). I am overwhelmed every time I open it. If you’re a “freight car guy” and you don’t have it, your library is quite incomplete.

The first of the 1937 cars I want to present is an Erie car. The photo below shows the first car in an order for 200, Erie 79000–70199, built by Pullman-Standard in February 1940. It has a Viking corrugated roof, Youngstown doors, Ajax hand brake, steel grid running board, and Dreadnaught ends (Pullman photo, Biernacki collection).

The model faithfully reproduces the paint scheme, including the black roof, ends, and door. The running board is shown as unpainted. Soon after the built date of this car, Erie abandoned painting doors black, but naturally some cars so painted survived in service for years. That will be my challenge with this model, to be well-weathered original paint 13 years later, in my modeling year of 1953.  

The second car on today’s agenda is a Southern Pacific version. Like several major railroads, as soon as the AAR committee’s design features were pretty much settled in 1936, SP ordered 1750 cars from four builders, and a year later went back for 1000 more. So the “1937” design is important to the SP fleet. 

Of that initial order, 500 cars (SP 32770–33269, Class B-50-18) were built by Pullman-Standard, with an example shown below (Pullman-Standard photo). The first. 350 cars of this order had Ureco handbrakes.

Note that the initials SP here, with no periods. SP had discontinued the use of periods in reporting marks in 1931. An end view of another car of this class, at left below (Pressed Steel Car Co.), shows the five-spoke Ureco brake wheel also used on 350 of the Pullman-Standard cars. You can click on the image to enlarge it.

The model I received didn’t have this handbrake attached, but in the box was a small plastic envelope with two different handbrake assemblies, one of which was the five-spoke Ureco (at right above). I have heard some grumbles that handbrakes are not correct on some Rapido 1937 box cars; I hope these people still have the original box so they can search for such an envelope. I will replace the as-delivered handbrake with the correct Ureco.

These models have some nice details not usually included from the factory, such as a service stencil on the brake reservoir. I show an example below.

Below is the Rapido SP model. Like many and possibly all the cars of Class B-50-18, it has a black roof. But the lettering (spelled-out road name) was introduced in 1946, and in fact the car has a reweigh date of 1948. I know of no evidence that post-1946 repaints would have retained the black roof, discontinued by that time. I could of course repaint the roof. However, I can mask the road name and capacity data, and heavily weather the rest of the car, to make this a realistic paint scheme. 

Both these are nice models, and both require some judicious paint and weathering to be reasonable for my 1953 modeling year. I will return to that in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

My layout’s SP fuel and water storage

My layout, set in 1953, includes a modest engine terminal in the town of Shumala, with a turntable, two-stall roundhouse, and a sand house, along with water and oil columns for locomotive servicing. The columns, of course, are fed from storage tanks. The water is assumed to be provided by the town water system, but the fuel oil is brought in by tank car, thus there is a fuel spot to unload those cars. For more about the engine terminal itself, you may wish to look at my article in Model Railroad Hobbyist, August 2017.

The Shumala water tank is a Harriman standard design, imported years ago in brass by Overland. It’s shown below, painted black as was SP practice for steel tanks, alongside my Banta Model Works roundhouse. At the right edge of this view is the pump house for the water tank, an extra building from the Walthers oil dealer kit for McGraw Oil.

To make a storage tank for fuel oil (for SP, this was Bunker C, a viscous product that had to be heated to flow through piping to the firebox), I used an empty bottle of carpenter’s glue, with the top cut off, and with a wrapper of thin styrene with impressed rivet rows, to make a storage tank. I added a ladder to the tank top and an access hatch along with an SP medallion. The oil pump house is another building from McGraw Oil that I didn’t use with my Associated Oil model (see Model Railroad Hobbyist, March 2014).

The tank car you see above has the aluminum end stripe that SP used to designate cars assigned to diesel fuel service. In the foreground above, incidentally, is my scratchbuilt sand house, made following SP drawings for such buildings (see my article in Model Railroad Hobbyist, for January 2021).

To the right of the black fuel oil tank in the photo above is a smaller silver tank. This tank stores diesel fuel, with a clearer view of it below. I described building this tank, with color and label following an SP tank I photographed at West Oakland, in a previous blog post (you can find it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/12/adding-storage-tanks.html ). 

The car at left below, probably delivering Bunker C fuel, is at the actual unloading spot. It is a generic black SP tank car, thus not in assigned service. The car is one of my several conversions of Athearn tank cars to accurate SP models. These Athearn conversions have been described in a full article about the process at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/05/modeling-sp-tank-cars.html ).

In addition to the end stripe on tank cars in diesel fuel service, there was also an all-aluminum scheme for this service, and in the early 1950s cars in both schemes were common. Here is an example of another Athearn conversion, lettered with the decal set I designed (now available from Tichy). This is the right side of the car, which correctly lacks dome walkway and grab iron.

In addition to providing a source for the fuel and water columns in the engine servicing area, the Bunker C and diesel fuel storage tanks are destinations for loaded tank cars, adding a little more switching around the engine terminal. Here’s an example waybill. Though SP mostly bought petroleum products from Chevron, they purchased from other oil companies also.

These parts of my engine terminal have worked out well. Though simple, they complete the logic of fuel and water supply, and as mentioned, are also an unloading destination. 

Tony Thompson 

Completing a Hendrickson reefer, Part 2

Last year, I posted the first steps in competing one of Richard Hendrickson’s projects that I inherited, which was on his work bench when he passed away. It is a resin kit for a Santa Fe Class RR-21 reefer. You can read the post about it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/07/completing-richard-hendrickson-reefer.html . 

In that first post, I showed the model as it came to me, basic body complete and underframe fully built, and then my first step, painting the side color but not other parts of the model. Unlike a number of Richard’s incomplete projects, this one didn’t have a box of detail parts with it, so I needed to select and install all of them. A first issue is what should they look like.

Here is a photo of a new Santa Fe RR-21 car, showing the ladders clearly (Santa Fe photo, from the Santa Fe Modelers’ book Refrigerator Cars, which Richard co-authored). This is the as-built paint scheme, not the later one I will apply to the model.

Clearly there is a 7-rung ladder on the side and a 6-rung ladder on the end, and the hand brake is Ajax. The brake step is solid metal, not a grid pattern. Grab irons are straight pattern.

As I mentioned in the previous post (linked in the first paragraph, above, I planned to detail the roof and ends, then mask the sides, and paint roof, ends and underframe black. That would allow simple masking of the un-detailed sides. At the same time, side details to be added, such as ladders and placard boards, can be painted black also, prior to attachment.

Although I did not have any ladders on hand that are as delicate looking as what you see in the photo above, I did want to have ladders with decent stiles and free-standing rungs. Most plastic ladders are for taller cars like box cars, so I had to hunt for shorter ladders. I had some ancient metal ladders in my parts collection that are indeed the right height, and trimmed some to the 6- and 7-rung lengths you see above. They are shown below, along with one original ladder at right from which I cut down the others.

I began with the A end of the car. I taped a 7-rung ladder to the side in the correct location, and made sure the 6-rung ladder would have its rungs aligned, then attached it with canopy glue. I also added a placard board, end-sill grab irons from styrene rod, and a wire grab iron at the right edge of the end. I then added what was needed to the B end (see prototype photo above), including an Ajax handbrake.

Another challenging problem with Santa Fe reefers is the hatch rest bars. An example is shown below, showing the hatches of a Class RR-10 car (Santa Fe photo), taken from the Santa Fe Modelers’ book cited above. 

What about dimensions? I haven’t found a modeling article that gives those dimensions, so I turned to the Santa Fe Modelers’ book again for a drawing, page 280. Below I show a portion of that drawing. Scaling the rest bar parts, they appear to be about 3 inches wide and stand about 12 inches high. I have seen them modeled with flat wire, which can be too narrow. (You can click on this to enlarge it.)

One could possibly consider styrene strip for these hatch rest bars, but the result would be terribly fragile. I decided to try using 0.005-inch brass sheet to cut strips to bend to the shape shown above. I will report further on that, and preparation for painting, in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

HO scale construction equipment

As part of the weathering project of some 1975-era freight cars, about which I posted recently, I also was requested to weather some HO scale models of 1975-era construction equipment (see the freight car post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/08/another-weathering-project.html ). These are era-appropriate models, made by First Gear and very nice (see their website at: https://firstgearinc.com/diecast-replicas/ ).

Below I show First Gear’s International Harvester tracked loader, model TP-25 with ROPS (Roll-Over Protective Structure) and ripper at rear. The prototype, equipped like this, was a 25-ton machine.

The smaller version was the I-H 175 series, around ten tons weight. Below is an internet image of one, helpfully well used, also with ROPS. 

I also benefited from my son’s sending me an image of a very similar Caterpillar vehicle, also with ROPS, useful for seeing what a well-used machine looks like. First, an overall view, very helpful view of the looks of the tracks and overall dirt. Second, a view of the blade, emphasizing the bare steel look of the teeth (Cam Thompson photos).

These give me what I need to start weathering these impressive First Gear models. I will come back to that in a future post.

Tony Thompson