35: The Soho brass tank car, lettered with decals from
Funaro & Camerlengo, as a stand-in for the prototype
car shown in Figure 34.
35
36: A view from the northeast of the Associated bulk
oil dealer, in place in my layout town of Shumala. At
far left can be seen the platform for unloading propane
tanks, and at far right is the truck loading platform.
That’s the Shumala yard office in the foreground.
36
As late as the 1950s, Associated, though a part of Tidewater
Associated Oil Company since 1926 (see Bibliography for more
on the history), continued to operate its own tank cars under
the reporting mark AOX. (34) shows a prototype photo taken in
1955 of such a car.
I have a couple of models of these cars, one of which is a
Sunset brass “TM8” car. The other is a stand-in, an old Soho
tank car lettered with decals from Funaro & Camerlengo
(F&C). There is also a resin tank car kit from F&C for an
Associated tank car, for those interested in building one.
Upgrading this kit was the topic of an article by Ted Culotta
from his series on Essential Freight Cars (see Bibliography).
My stand-in is shown in (35).
The completed bulk oil depot
Assembling all the component parts shown above, my con-
cluding photos depict the facility as it appears on my layout,
(36 and 37). The two different viewpoints of the photos illus-
trate all the component parts.
Other Bulk Oil Dealer Models
One other model I have built is the old Chooch kit, no. 9015,
now out of production, which I put together as a Union Oil
Company dealer. It is shown as (38). The tanks are somewhat
smaller than the Walthers tanks and are arranged differently.
I have included some barrels painted in Union’s blue and
orange colors.
Jared Harper is modeling Santa Fe’s Alma branch in Kansas,
and has put together two bulk oil dealerships based on proto-
type photographs. These form an interesting contrast to the
kind of arrangement I have modeled, and with Jared’s permis-
sion, I show two of his models here, (39 and 40). The models
rest on a plain styrene base, but the structures themselves are
Getting Real Column - 20
MRH-Mar 2014
