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
Getting Real Column - 2
MRH-Mar 2013
