I was out wandering in the woods behind my house today, in an area that I have never previously explored and found a riveted tank. As I walked around it I noticed the dome, and lucky for me the dome casting was lettered "Harrisburg Car Manufacturing Company Makers 1888".

Its amazing that a 124 year old tankcar body would still be in existence, and that for all these years sits directly behind my house, although on the other side of the NS Youngstown Line and on the property of a campgrounds of which I've never visited. The ends are cut out and it is located near a stream, so my guess is that it was purchased from the railroad scrap yard that was once in Coalburg, OH as a culvert, but never installed.

Are there any Harrisburg cars, especially tank cars from this era preserved, or is it likely a last of its kind?


Harrisburg Tank Car1 by Todengine, on Flickr


Harrisburg Tank Car by Todengine, on Flickr

Hot Metal -

An interesting find! I checked the Mid-Continent Museums list of car manufacturers and found out that the company was in existance from 1853 to 1891. A topsy-turvy company history to say the least, affected by the various booms and busts of the countries history during that period and also affected by the Civil War. The Pennsylvania oil boom led directly to the company building tank cars and the one you found was probably (?) meant for a company in that particular market. They also apparently made the first refrigerator cars to transport meat, although the design was not great and might have a hand in the companies demise. Anyway, the car is extremely interesting and probably could be restored as a railroad car for display with new ends and a wood frame (which the company used for all of their tank cars).

Les

Funny you should post those Harrisburg Car photos... Our club has located a tank in western North Carolina that is complete. This one is marked 1890, is 32 feet long and 6 feet in diameter.

It is unfortunately a little long for the narrow gauge line we were hoping it might have been from, but like you, we are curious as to how historically signficant it is. Looking at online resources, I don't see too many 1890's tank cars preserved, and in actuality, it would be a pretty easy matter to build a wooden flat to mount it on.

What's the consensus? A worthwhile project to pursue, or just another "oh, that's nice?"

Thanks

Matt Bumgarner

Depends, Matt; how restrictive is your mission statement regarding narrow gage?

dave

Dave-

Not very, as we are calling ourselves the "SE Narrow Gauge & Shortline Museum." Of our pieces, we have in hand or promised 4 NG boxcars, 2 NG passenger cars, and 1 NG gang car (all from either NC, TN, or WVA), with an eye toward a couple of other pieces.

Our std gauge portion is a Alco 2-6-0, an operating Alco S-3, a 40' Southern boxcar, an SR baywindow caboose, the Yadkin 100 Edwards car, and a 32' Richmond & Danville boxcar.

We are trying *VERY* hard to keep our scope limited, but not so much that it is unneccesarily restrictive. Honestly, it would probably be easy enough to get the tank, sandblast it and paint it for under $1k and set it out on the lot for a rainy day project, but we have so much to do already, I don't want to get another project just for the sake of getting another project. If it is historically worthwhile and interesting, then I am for it.

Thanks for any insights!

Matt

PS- we are having our annual Hobo Luncheon on Dec 1st at 12pm for the musuem volunteers, families, and any guests... ANYBODY is welcome to attend and we certainly invite any interested folks and their friends. There is no charge, just send me a PM to let me know you are coming. We would love to meet and break bread with our fellow preservationists.

I think you could make an argument that tank cars, especially pre-saftey appliance era cars, are among the most under-preserved types of rolling stock... somewhere ahead of milk cars and stock cars, but behind flat cars and house cars.

Both finds are worthy of attention,

Rob

The WW&F Railway Museum in Maine owns the tank from one of two tank cars owned by the Bridgton & Harrison, and they hope some day to restore it. The second tank car is currently on the roster of the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad & Museum and is complete. The WW&F's car has the same style of Harrisburg dome. I've never been on top of the MNG's car, so I don't know if it's a Harrisburg or not. The B&H used the cars to transport gasoline to a fuel dealer, I believe. It took the two narrow gauge cars to contain the contents of one standard gauge tank car.

your tank is in much better condition than the one I found, as yours does not have huge holes torched in the ends. I have not measured the one I found, but I am curious if the two tanks are similar in size and construction. They could be sisters!

Looks like our museum now has a tank car project.

The owner agreed to donate it to us this morning.

Matt Bumgarner
www.newtondepot.com

Condolences and congradulations.

dave

Here are some photos of the Harrisburg Car Co. cars:

http://www.library.upenn.edu/collection ... car-1.html

Here is a sample of the tank cars we are discussing:

Neat looking trucks. Anyone know what type of truck they are? There are a couple more photos of tanks in that same collection.

Thanks for posting the link.

Dave J

That is quite an interesting collection of photos from the link above. The trucks look like a scaled-down version of wood beam passenger car trucks. On the tank car, it looks like some sort of enclosed coil springs; I doubt that they are hydraulic snubbers or shocks, but I could be wrong.

Thinking way back, I used to have some Mantua/Tyco Civil War freight cars with similar trucks; 1888 is not too far removed from the 1860s. Some of the other cars pictured have the same truck, while others have what look like real lightly constructed archbars.

Lots of neat photos to pore over, if one has the time-

I bet you could make use of Carter Brothers castings to replicate the composite trucks with timbers from a source I'll pass along in NC privately, Matt. I'll probably be up your way to stop in at Link Boiler to check out the Dewey Bros hardware next Thursday or Friday. Will you be around?

dave

The tank at the WW&F Railway museum. Measured it last Tuesday 25' long and 64 inches in diameter.