time. They readily depict the main features of such businesses.
There are usually two to five tall vertical tanks, rarely all iden-
tical, and often one or more shorter vertical tanks. Many
dealerships also had horizontal tanks, but not all. The piping
connecting tanks to the rail unloading point, and to the usual
truck loading point, may be above or below ground. Groups of
tanks almost always had walkways up top and ladders or stair-
ways to access them. You then have an office building, often
combined with a warehouse for lubricants and other packaged
materials, and usually a pump house.
Before continuing, I should mention that there is a very help-
ful Kalmbach book on the general topic of the petroleum
industry,
The Model Railroader’s Guide to Industries Along
the Tracks,
by Jeff Wilson, Kalmbach, 2004. This volume was
the first of a multi-volume series on lineside industries, and
unfortunately is out of print, but can be found for sale by
online dealers in used books.
There also have been a number of articles over the years in
model magazines about oil dealers. Two especially good ones,
because they contain plans, were in
Railmodel Journal
(now
available at
). One was in December 1994, the
other in April 1996, and both include partial construction arti-
cles (full citations in the Bibliography).
The oil company for the model I am building in this column is
Associated. My brief history of Associated, an interesting com-
pany, is listed in the Bibliography.
Prototype Bulk Oil Dealers
I know from my own photographs of bulk oil dealerships, that
since the 1970s few of them are still rail-served, but often
one can detect where the rails once were, and sometimes the
1: A Texaco bulk oil dealer, in Woodland, California,
December 17, 1939. The siding is part of the
Sacramento Northern (by this time a property of the
Western Pacific).This silver tank car is a relatively
rare car with such a paint scheme, assigned to deliver
consumer products and thus given a brighter paint
scheme. Note also the adjoining dealership, with its
Signal Gasoline tank logo – Wilbur C. Whittaker photo.
1
Getting Real Column - 2
abandoned siding is still in place. I will just present illustrative
examples here, chosen to be reasonably representative of pro-
totype variety.
One of the better prototype photos out there is this one from
Woodland, California (1), taken by Wilbur Whittaker. It shows
a Texaco dealership, with the next-door Signal Oil company
tank just visible. The tank car is that modeler’s favorite, the
silver tank with black lettering. But nearly all the tank cars in
every oil company fleet were plain black, and in most cases
only a few cars, assigned to consumer products such as kero-
sene, would receive the silver paint scheme. Nevertheless, as
MRH-Mar 2014
