The Monticello Railway Museum had repainted two of their single dome 1920-era tank cars as shown in the attached photos. It's my understanding that the two cars had been donated to MRyM by ADM some time ago and were in a gray color without much lettering or any historical info. So, the museum decided to letter one for GATX and the other for the A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company. The two cars will make a wonderful addition to vintage freight trains in future MRyM operations. Credit for the two photos, which were taken shortly after the cars were painted (with Imron) and clear coated, goes to Paul Jones.

Les

Very nice work here, excellent lettering job.

Howard P.

Let see, ADM gives you 2 tank cars, but you letter one to the name of A.E. Staley their competitor? That is some kind of appreciation.

Those are some nice looking vintage tank cars. Too bad there are no roll up freight car shows around. That Staley car would win first prize without having a hood to pop. Nice!

They look great! Nice work!

.

Yes, in 2002, ADM donated two tank cars, formerly owned by the Swift Co. Soybean Mill in Champaign, Illinois. They were purchased from GATX by Swift (and lettered SWFT 1 and SWFT 2) during the oil embargo, and used to store fuel oil for on-site generators and boilers in case of an interruption of the plant's fuel supplies. Both tanks, once in place at the Swift plant, remained stationary until they moved to Monticello in late 2002. They were donated, along with an amount of plant track material to MRM, in an effort to clean up the site as ADM was knocking down the elevator silos and facilities. GATX, in their generosity, also donated $2500 to assist with the preservation of the two cars. The ADM employee who made the donation happen was consulted with our planned repainting of the two cars, and had no problem with it.

We strive to repaint cars into a scheme they once wore while in service, and in the case of these two, on only one had clear markings for what it was, and that was GATX 7297. We were unable to find any other markings on the other car of it's true heritage, other than construction stamping in the tank heads that it was built by GATCC in Feb. of 1928. There was also stamped in the center sill - either QTX or OTX 8489. In consulting with the tank car gurus out there, Ted Culotta and Jerry Stewart, they were also stumped as to who's car it may have been, but most likely a GATX car of unknown number. So, since we have no firm history on this particular car, and local firm AE Staley had a fleet of them during the time period we are basing the paint schemes on, and ADM did not, we decided to paint it as you now see it.

Thanks for the kind comments on the paint and lettering work! Qui dicere potest ita non erat. (loosely translated to "Who can say it was not so".)

The two tank cars were finally mechanically finished today, and are now out where better photos could be had.

Kent

Is AESX 105 a historically used number or the next number outside a `class' of tankers?

We have seen photos of Staley cars with numbers from 79 up through 294, with the closest in this type of car being 97 and 113, so I'm sure they had a 105. We used this number simply because we found one number stenciled on one truck bolster of this car when researching it, but the reporting mark was not clear. That number was 36105. Reporting mark most likely GATX, simply because it was clearly not UTLX. So we appropriated the last three digits of that number, since that was in the range of numbers used by AE Staley on this type of car. We stenciled the brake valve support with GATX 36105, in an unobtrusive place to record what we think was on a truck bolster, and possibly the car.

That said, GATCC built some of Staley's cars of this type, so... I don't expect it ever was AESX 105, but I can't say with any amount of certainty it wasn't, either.

Kent

Kent -

MRyM's decision to number the Staley tank car as A.E.S.X. 105 makes sense to me. We had a somewhat similar problem with our Illinois Central Iowa Division offset cupola caboose at the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum on which we could never identify the actual number. There were 36 of these Iowa Division cabooses built; numbers 9900-9917 and 9950-9967. We identified the numbers on ten of the surviving cars but there were two in Tennessee for which we had no IC numbers. We took a chance and put number 9914 on our caboose. If one of those other surviving cabooses eventually turns out to be 9914, we figure we can change the number on our caboose to 9911. Sure hope we don't have to do it.

Les

Outstanding work by you and the rest of the MRM folks, Kent!

This is what railroad restoration and preservation is all about. Plus, due to having wonderful, indoor, storage these cars will always look good for use on photo freights.

Exprail