There is a recent posting on the "Ahead of the Torch" website about a Gulf Oil single dome tank car. The photo posted by the railroad museum (whomever they might be) shows the car with a feature that I had never noticed before. The poling pockets were located on the side of the car almost directly over the center of the trucks. Maybe this was common and I had never noticed it before. So the question is, how common was this? And why on the sides, instead of on the corners at the ends of the car? Oops, that's TWO questions I guess.

Les

Les,

On tank cars probably very common. The strongest members of the underframe would be the centersill and the bolsters. Any steel framing along the extremes of the sides and ends would only be needed to support any "running boards" and would need to to support the weight of a trainman or other workman. So the poling pockets are placed where there is strength to resist the pushing force.

Some cars had poling pockets on the truck frames, not on the carbody.

https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/sit ... view-1.jpg

We have a couple cars with similar trucks, one of which is a tank car.

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There were four or five major builders of tank cars over the years, and spotting features are mostly in the design of the frames, since the tanks were regulated from an early date. The poling pockets in the end of the body bolster was the design of one builder, although at the moment I forget which... Maybe after some more coffee it will come to me.

General American Tank Car had polling pockets designed into the ends of the bolsters by the late 1920s, if not earlier.

RGVRRM has a GATC type 30 with one type of pocket.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rgvrrm/46564581441

Side dump car, staff handbrake, no reporting marks. Has to be South America. Never saw truck frames like that before. You would have to hold the pole by your knees!

Except most builders didn't do it that way. Most tank cars that date from the era when poling pockets were applied installed an end sill and short side sills from the bolster out that were adequately strong to pole against, and installed the poling pockets in the usual place, at the corners. Poling pockets built into the bolster weren't exactly rare, but were by no means the rule.

Dennis,
Thank you for your observations.

We have a air dump with a similar truck, note the poling pockets on the left one. This is the best image of it I could find on short notice.

This particular car survived in MOW service into at least the 1970s. It also has a stemwinder handbrake.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPho ... #336631661

We also have a tank car with a different design of truck that also has poling pockets. This isn't the best photo, as the trucks are in the shade and I was using my phone, but you can just make out the poling pockets on the truck side frames:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GgceV ... Jle3PFz5-0

I wonder if those poling pocket cast into the truck frame are a Canada only thing? I've been researching freight cars for the last 35-40 years, both for my personal modeling and to design model railroad kit tooling professionally, and I have NEVER see that feature incorporated into a car truck until now. I'll admit, I haven't had much exposure to Canadian built cars, but I have had some. Learn something new every day.

Both of those cars carry very heavy, high center of gravity materials that you wouldn't want to get rolling to the side by putting a pole on the car frame.