.

Would this car have hauled crude oil or refined products?

Very sharp! A quick glance at that shot and I'd think it was Ontario in the 50s.

Great photos! Nice to also see 31 running.

[redacted]

Great restoration Kelly. The Pacific Locomotive Assoc. has a similar single dome Flying 'A' tankcar we are in the process of restoring and painting. We also have a three dome Flying 'A' to be restored in the near future.

This was one of three cars that were at Bay Head Jct. NJ. They were used for a number of years as fuel cars for the NJT F-40s but the towns people complained and now they can nolonger fuel in Bay Head. The other two cars have gone to my museum. New Jersey Museum of Transportation. We would like to get rid of one if we could as we dont have much room and they are big cars for a narrow gauge operation. We took both of them cause it was take um or have them scraped! So if anyone is interested in a tank car contact NJMT. By the way that car looks great guys! good work and its nice to see the 31.

-Eric

When RDG closed Green St. Enginehouse on 1-1-1963, they moved fuelling and light work to Wayne Junction. As I recall, the fuel was delivered in TWOX tank cars.

That tank car looks splendid- can't wait to get a shot of it. I have a great interest in pre-WWII freight cars, partially because I wrote my Master's Thesis on billboard refrigerator cars. It would be great if the SRR could get one of those.

Great work!

Joshua

In a recent post the Nevada Northern Railway was looking for some freight cars for photo freights. Maybe they would be interested?

What's amazing to me is that Strasburg is a for-profit railroad with little economic reason to restore old freight cars, yet they turn out some of the best freight car restorations ever. One would suppose that they would be too busy with other repair work to even consider it, but they seem to turn out at least one top-notch freight car restoration per year.

I am constantly impressed by the work turned out by the shop forces at Strasburg. Can't wait to get back there, soon I hope.

Kelly, could you give us some idea of the time spent in researching the paint scheme for accuracy? Also, I think all of us would be interested in what kind of preparation work was done (i.e., sandblasting, etc) and the primer and paint used. Lettering has been a challenge on the restorations I am involved with. Did you have painting/lettering diagrams for this tank? Since it will be an outdoor exhibit (I'm guessing), was consideration given to using a more durable paint? A restoration like that can't have been done quickly and without a great deal of preparation and research.

Wonderful job! Looking forward to your response.

The reason we are able to restore these cars is photo freights. Before we started these on a regular basis our only reason to have freight equipment was for storage which limited us pretty much to boxcars except for the necessary M of W cars.

These cars are very expensive to restore properly, and we are fortunate to have people on staff with the interest and knowledge to do much historical research on their own.

As a for-profit company, the bottom line is still the bottom line. It needs to be black or we cease to exist. Thanks to the people who support the photo freights, we are able to add a bit of spice to our normal fare.

Kelly will be posting pictures of the Pennsy hopper in a week or two - it is pretty cool.

I thought you were going to throw some dirt on that thing!

Looks great. Congratulations on a fine job.

Looking forward to seeing that PRR hopper, too.

JAC

Stephen:

I can shed a little light on the research side.

Research was first of all forensic - seeing what was beneath the CNJ paint on the car, and how the car was stamped and marked. We're 99% sure the car started as a GATX car because of that company's markings on the bolsters, along with casting dates that correlated with the built date. Walt Keely and myself then contacted a number of sources that we use, along with the ORER for various years.

Sam Fischer lightly sanded the entire tank to "lift" the layers and the markings from the years. It was then that we discovered the wonderful Associated Oil "Flying A". Templates were made of everything significant that we found, and then it was basically up to Linn to choose the time period and the appearance based on the historical references. The GATX as-built appearance was a little less spectacular than the late 30's appearance, so the wings won.

The tank was in such great shape that it required no sandblasting. It was sanded, primed and finished with two coats of a finish paint. And here, I will need to defer to my co-workers for the paint specifics. I was otherwise occupied with the brakes, wheels, etc.