The Steam Railroading Institute recently acquired two 8,000-gallon riveted tanks of 1940's vintage. These cars were the former D&M X-128 and X-129, and were stored for many years at Wenona Yard in Bay City, Michigan.

We are in the midst of relettering these cars for restoration and photo freight service. Below is a picture of the cars at SRI, and the only historical images we have been able to find, taken in 1970's, and courtesy of FallenFlags.com





Our question is this --- is there an existing database for tank cars of this type? Clearly, one of the cars was a GATX car, the other we are not entirely sure. Any help as to further history would be appreciated. We are also actively looking for photos of tank cars of this type used by Michigan industries, particularly Dow Chemical, etc.

Sincerely,

TJ Gaffney
SRI

We have a similar car that was a Tidewater car. There were three in this group. We have one, the Pine Creek in north Jersey has one and Stasburg has the third. They have totally retored theirs to its former Tidewater glory. They may have some info that could be helpful.

Later!
Mr. Ed
PTHT

There are seven areas to look at that might give you more information. The first is on the tank head. Towards the upper centerline of the tank heads, there may be stampings indicating tank order number and tank number on the order and dates. It might also indcate the builder. The next three places to look are at the castings on the outlet valve, the casting on the safety valve or the casting on the dome cover. These often have the car builder, ususally initials and not the name, and pattern number shown. The safety valve castings for some of the tank car builders had there information cast on the housing. The final places to look would be on the truck sideframe or truck body bolster, if they are original to the car as evidenced by the casting dates as compared to the built dates of the car.

You might check and see if there is a special interest group associated with the National Model Railroad Association. Some of the modelers are more into tracing out that information than the rest of us.

Per Mr. Ed, we traced our car (Strasburg's) from its CNJ number. But while sanding the tank lightly - it pays not to sandblast - we exposed a lot of the info that is displayed in fresh paint on the car today. We discovered the wonderful Tidewater "Flying A" this way. Even though it is a later design than we wanted to portray (the car was rather plain as built), we couldn't resist and dated the car to match the herald.

After you determine a company, a number and a build date, the rest of the info should surface fairly easily.