I worked alongside the Frisco main line less than a mile SW of Tower 77 and the triangle; although the tower was gone by the time I started working there. In the days before UP scooped up the MKT, and SSW, and BN absorbed SLSF, railfanning at the triangle was most interesting. Early on, congestion spilled over to the vehicle traffic on Belt Line Road and the I-35E frontage roads. That whole triangle actually occupied less than a whole acre, but it still exists. The Cotton Belt line east is now leased by DG&NE, and leads to the KCS yard in Wylie (among other places). The line west of I-35E is used by FWWR to reach Ft Worth. The MKT line was purchased by DART and mostly supplanted by their light rail, with the section north from Carrollton to Denton leased to DCTA commuter rail. Some of the old MKT line still exists to serve local rail customers. The Frisco line that ran alongside the business that I worked at is still a very busy line for BN and now BNSF headed to Whitesboro. I spent many hours staring out the windows watching traffic on that line. It was there that I first saw Frisco crews do a "flying switch" (many times) to service industries on the other side of the tracks. That ended in 1980 when BN took over.
RCH,Here's that UP local hauling cars out to the Trinity tank facility from my vantage point at the Sunnyside sand plant:
Later on I found myself waiting on Amtrak next to the Trinity spot and pull tracks where these strange and unfortunately spotless tank cars were tied down:
In the spirit of this thread I wish they had been dirty!
To that point I think you're onto something with the white. There is air in tank cars and as the temperature cools at night there is often a difference between the temperature of the air inside the tank and outside. This causes condensation to collect on the tank where the air is (this also happens on covered hoppers and you can see where the top of the load is in the car based on where the condensation ends). The condensation eventually runs down the side of the car leaving streaks. If you've ever done strenuous work outdoors in the summer you might have left salty sweat stains in your clothes as the moisture evaporates and the dissolved minerals remain. The same thing happens when the condensation evaporates on railcars. It shows up prominently on black cars like tanks and carbon black cars. Over enough time the process wears away the paint and rust forms. I would say to keep that in mind if you want to do the makeup sponge rust technique. It will guide your placement of the rust. I would also point out that this is a process, so a car needs to have enough age for this process to result in rust. The load also informs how this process works since an ethanol load will retain heat much less than beef tallow or an elevated temperature load like asphalt or molten sulfur.
I like this one! It looks very plausible. The biggest problem I run into with tank cars is making sure streaking doesn't look too much like brush strokes. I almost always have to go back over them with some thinner to tone them down. The airbrush solves that nicely. Next, since I have older tankers, I'm going to be adding chipping effects and rust spots. If you aren't familiar with them I always look at what the military modelers are doing. They take weathering to an insane level. I found this video on YouTube, and I'm going to try his methods on some of the black tank cars I have.
Thank you Tom. I was very unsure about even posting the car for sale as I thought the whiteness of the car was too scrambled…I always feel weathering should flow top to bottom but I have a former Railroad guy who tells me no. The movement of the cars moves the wetness on the car sides all around. Dirt gets on that wetness and will dry and it’s not a straight flow down the car. Rust generally flows allow lines, line the body panels joints and I try to stick to that unless I have a picture proving differently
Alan, thank you. I appreciate the comments.
Willie, really no issue. While I generally don’t enjoy threads being derailed but RCH didn’t derail. If someone really derails one of my threads I will let them know by messaging on the forum mail. But, not needed on this one. I enjoy listening and reading from knowledgeable people.
We started driving i35 down to Austin as those miserable flyovers were being built. Sometimes it was easy travel but others we just sat. Now it’s a breeze traveling through. So this is a more normal view from what I see from the highway.The construction of the DART Silver Line is well under way on the former Cotton Belt from DFW airport through Plano. I'm not sure what this means for the Fort Worth & Western or Dallas Garland and Northeastern. I live near the former Cotton Belt northeast of Fort Worth and I can't recall the last time I saw a freight train on the line since it's been rebuilt for the TexRail commuter cars.
I took a trip out to Carrollton a few months ago and got these photos of the former Tower 77 area from the DART station platform. It gives a nice perch to view the area but it also obscures the view of the triangle. Looking east:
The triangle, with the former MKT from lower left to top center, BNSF/former Frisco from upper right to left middle and former Cotton Belt now DART Silver Line lower left to lower right:
Looking west:
That tank closest to the camera shows the condensation rust I was talking about. That track is where you could find Southern Pacific and Cotton Belt locomotives idling away in the days before the UP merger. The multitude of flyover highways in this photo is fairly new. In the years Willie is talking about there was one bridge looking west -- I35E -- and the rest was surface streets. A fun place to take a heavy train!
Nicely done Tom from NY State. He he!
RCH. I guess you have reminded me to change the couplers on the tank cars I will keep for myself to the shelf type. I had looked into Sergant couplers but heard they were finicky to put together and install. The new open source type though I read are very easy retro fits. The ones you show look great.I love that flat aluminum!
Those Kadee shelf couplers are not a bad approximation of the SF couplers the prototype car has. SF couplers are huge compared to SE couplers, which are the standard double shelf couplers you see on tank cars today. SF couplers were used on tank cars built in the 70s. I can't give an exact date range but '72 to '78 inclusive and likely earlier up to 1970. I'm not sure when the change was made in 1979 but by 1980 SE couplers were standard. The draft gear for E and F couplers is completely different, so it's not a simple matter to swap out couplers on the real thing; however, E, SE, and SBE couplers are interchangeable with each other as are F and SF couplers, so you occasionally might see a car with mismatched couplers as long as they are both E or both F.
These cars have Sergent SE couplers:
And this one has Sergent SF couplers:
Thank you for showing these. I just got 1 of 3 Genesis slurry cars in from the LHS. The last of the rolling stock I need for the paper mill. I will wait for all 3 to get here before weathering.Sergent couplers are definitely not for the faint of heart! I don't know how the new couplers are from Innovative Models, but I might find out next week when I visit a friend who just got some.
I converted my fleet over in 2013 or so with a few bulk packs of couplers and lots of dummy couplers. Now the dummy couplers just stay on unit trains and the working Sergent couplers go on everything else.
This is how that tank car started out:
It is an Atlas clay slurry tank car which is a decent match for some phosphoric acid tank cars built around the same time. It has the signature ACF features of the time, which include a control valve and reservoir at the A end and the handbrake at the B end. Speaking of the control valve, I was not happy with it at all so I 3D printed a few ABDX valves through Shapeways and installed them on the three tank cars in my post above. This is a before photo of the control valve, which is really just a lump shaped like a control valve.
Here the car is stripped and repainted with a new control valve and reservoir:
Now I'm adding decals and cobbling together "PHOSPHORIC ACID" from a couple other labels:
Decals are complete, I've replaced the stirrups and flowed some panel line accent into the crossover and manway platforms:
These phosphoric acid cars can get filthy, especially if they've been around for awhile, so I picked out some prototype photos and did some damage:
The area where we spot these cars has some caliche gravel driveways alongside and over the tracks so mud is always splashing up underneath as we switch the cars. I tried to get a little of that on the trucks.
From what I understand the molds for these cars have been damaged so Atlas is not likely to run them again. The last run was in 2003.
Interesting you are using “feet“ for the cabinets. The CN stuff I had noticed in Central Wisconsin were on slabs of concrete.
Well they aren't exact. Modeling tank cars of a certain era you have to take what you can get. They are outwardly similar in length, barrel diameter, fittings, saddles and brake arrangement. That checks a lot of boxes for me!
Here in NY a lot of them are on feet. They are older so that might have something to do with it.
