As some of you may recall from a previous thread (http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine...-8-tank-car-made-from-a-Blackstone-UTLX-model), I find the Conoco tank cars particularly intriguing due to the wide variety found in that group. Precise info about these cars is often rather hard to come by. And the book by Sloan on the D&RGW freight cars contains some inconsistencies in the chapter on these cars. All of the major groups of these cars are still missing as a mass market product. AMS has now issued a tank car in On3 and On30 scale. It comes in many paint schemes, including several numbers of CONX, and both with a black and a silver tank. While this is an interesting looking car, those who want prototypically correct models can only use CONX 5 of the wide set of paint schemes. The AMS car has actually been modeled after a somewhat unique tank car. The original CONX 5 car was part of a group that probably looked rather similar. Though pictures to confirm this seem not to be publicly available. CONX 5 was mainly used on the C&S, and at some point it needed a new flatcar base after an accident in 1935. (I'd like to thank Dave Grant who provided this info in another forum.) So the C&S apparently used one of their flat cars to put the original tank on. There is an excellent picture of this car in the Narrow Gauge Pictorial Volume VIII on page 105. Unfortunately, AMS did not follow this picture when they lettered the car. They apparently used the drawing of this car as found in Sloan's book on page 359 (2nd edition). There, this car is much more sparsely lettered. To some extent, the missing lettering should be available as a decal on Thinfilm decal On 330. The photo mentioned above also shows that one of the original stake pockets was missing. And from another picture, it would seem that the other side had a missing stake pocket as well. Needless to say that the AMS model has all the stake pockets. Thus, if one desires to model the prototype correctly, one stake pocket needs to be removed, the second one from the brake wheel on both sides. That should not be a major problem. For HOn3 scale, there is an old kit that comes up every now and then on that big auction site, sometimes as a built-up model. I had acquired such a built-up car some time ago. It was (incorrectly) lettered as CONX 7. In a future post, I'll report a bit about some experiences I have had with this car's reconstruction.
The built-up model I had acquired was built from a Classic Miniatures kit, CM-505. The picture posted here is as it was on the auction site. Here, it's only the tank car that is of interest. As can be seen, it was lettered for CONX 7. I liked the weathering and thus decided not to start from scratch. Though that caused some problems when I realized that the large letters of my Thinfilm decals did not exactly match the ones that were on the model. As can also be seen, the tank had been lettered before it was fixed to the platform. (Unfortunately, the On3 model by AMS has the same problem.) Nevertheless, I decided to leave the tank on its base, for fear of doing too much uncontrollable damage. I only later realized that this also meant to perpetuate another mistake: The dome vent ought to be oriented towards the brake wheel, and my model has it the other way. This then caused a dilemma when it came to which stake pocket should be removed. Rather accidentally, I used the dome vent for orientation. Anyway, these are things that only bother those who know. I added some whitewash weathering to the large white letters. The Thinfilm decals even provide the lettering for the trucks. I think that's a neat feature. As can be seen on the third picture as well, the trucks do not fit the prototype exactly, if compared to the picture in NG Pictorial Vol VIII mentioned in my previous post. However, the type comes pretty close. The decal set did not provide an accurate lettering possibility for the tank ends. Thus I used a version that I thought looked not too far off. The bands used to attach the tank are too wide, but after painting them and adjusting the lettering to go over them, the basic impression is decent, at least. Sure, no match to Blackstone, not least because the whole car is a bit too large for the scale. I'll get to that later.
Some parts can be explained, others I have not found anything on. Thus, there were three batches built over time. The first set of cars, among these CONX 5, was numbered 1 to 20. They were mostly cars somewhat similar to CONX 5, I think. But built on a different wooden flatcar base. A sample can be seen in NG Pictorial Vol. IV on page 127, though CONX 7, at the time still had the earlier designation COLX. Then there were CONX 8, 10, and 11 mixed in that had a steel underframe, similar to the NF UTLX cars, and shown in NG Pictorial Vol. IV. Why there were these so different cars mixed in, I have not encountered anything about. A second set of cars was later built on a wide frame. The tanks for these 20 cars were built by GATX early in 1925 and the frames for them were built by D&RGW. They were numbered CONX 21 to 40. A second batch of 20 wide frame cars was apparently built late in 1925. These were built so that they could be used both for standard and narrow gauge. And it probably explains why not all 20 of them are accounted for in the NG files. Anyway, they originally had numbers 301 - 320. And they do not seem to appear in the files till the early 30s. They were then numbered following the scheme for the previous sets. Some were used to fill in gaps in the numbering after the originals had to be scrapped. Thus numbers 1, 2 and 3 were assigned a second time, and the CONX 1 car in NG Pictorial IV is the second one with that number. That's why it looks more modern, actually similar to CONX 44 in that book, unlike what one would expect. Of this last batch, only numbers 41 to 48 were extending the roster. And 48 was later used as second number 4. Thus only 11 of the 20 cars from this third batch actually ended up on the NG, it seems. This is kind of a summary of more elaborate posts by Dave Grandt in February of this year on the Yahoo Group RioGrandeNarrowGauge forum. And I would like to extend my thanks to him here as well. Dave Grandt had really solved some riddles for me with his kindly shared knowledge! As for the tanks of the first series, these dated from about the turn of the century, some probably older. Numbers 8, 10, and 11 were originally standard gauge, thus explaining their different build. But it does not explain why they were mixed in the way they were. It's also interesting that there are a number of pictures of CONX 11, but that there seem to be none of number 10 that was supposedly built like number 11. Also of interest is the fact that CONX 11 never had the large CONOCO lettering. At least there are no pictures to prove the contrary. And in the second edition of Chris Lane's Slim Gauge Cars, there are pictures of CONX 8 showing it with and without dome walks.
Swissboy, There is one other CONX tank car that seems to have escaped some attention, CONX 6. This has a wood frame and is very similar to CONX 5. This car appears in several photos taken by Otto Perry on 26th October, 1940 on the RGS. Train consisted of RGS #40, D&RGW boxcar#3267, CONX #27 (Wide frame car), CONX #6 (Wood frame car), CONX #?? (Wide frame car), RGS caboose #0404. See the following books: Otto Perry, Master Railroad Photographer, page 133. Otto Perry's Railroad Pilgrimage, page 61. I built a model of this car in HOn3 in 1986. Scratch built frame with slightly modified tank from Classic Miniatures CONX #5 kit. Do you want to see a photo of this? Gary.
Thanks Gary, I always love to see such photos. CONX 6 still had the original base on all the photos that I know, thus looking decidedly different. And it is the one car that had the distinction of particularly long dome walks. That's often the best feature to recognize that car on photos. One picture I know is in NG Pictorial Vol.IV on page 131, where it is together with a steel wideframe CONX 27. Unfortunately, I do not have those Otto Perry photos you mentioned. But the one in NG Pictorial IV is also by Otto Perry, and the part of the consist shown may be the same.
Hello Gary, Several months ago you offered to show a picture of your CONX 6 model. As BoxcabE50 had already replied that you should please upload a picture, I did not answer then. However, I still have not seen this model. Thus, may I ask you to please post it here as offered. (I presume that question was not an April's fool joke, as you posted it on 1 April.)
I was mistaken, the AMS car's printing of the tank was done AFTER it was fixed to the base. Also, the On3 AMS car has the tank correctly oriented, with the vent towards the brake wheel. The pictures show a comparison of my two CONX 5 models in HOn3 and On3. The On3 car has gone through some improvements as well, see the separate thread for that topic: http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?147009-AMS-On3-tank-cars-CONX-5-partly-relettered
