Re: Western Railway Preservation Society

This is the large piece belonging to SVRR that cousin Tim alludes to. Tank car 99 was assembled to a heavy duty flat car with Vulcan trucks, built by SVRy with the tank remaining the property of Standard Oil Co. in June 1923. It was used to carry gasoline to a bulk plant at Prairie City. The line to Prairie was abandoned in 1933, but the car remained on roster till Oct. 1938. It is unknown if use was made of the car between 1933 and 1938. Pure speculation is that it could have been used to carry gasoline or diesel fuel to the OLC at Bates since Cats and trucks were beginning to be used pretty extensively in logging during the 1930's. I have not seen any railroad paper work from this period to confirm it's use. It is unclear what happened to the tank after 1938, but we know that the flat car was retained in service less the tank. Several stories have been put forth regarding disposition of the actual tank which include that it was used for fuel storage in Baker possibly by the county, another that it was cut in two and used to build pontoons for a small dredge, and another that it was used for fuel storage at Bates. This tank was recovered over at Unity, Ore. a small former lumber town in N.E. Ore. that never had rail service but is relatively close to Baker and Bates, Ore.. One of our SVRR members has made a thorough study of this tank comparing it's dimensions with the original tank via scaling photos and other data he was able to find. Quite recently he told me that he could find nothing about the yellow tank that does not match the original 99 tank in detail. We have not found any evidence of the Red Crown/Zerolene paint scheme on the yellow tank, but that does not negate the possibility that it is the original 99 tank since a paint job circa 1923 may have been sanded or even sandblasted off during the years it was in service on SVRy, or after it was repurposed. As a member of both SVRR and WRPS I am looking forward to seeing this project come to fruition. Note in the third photo that the tank car full of gasoline is placed directly behind one of the wood burning Mikados for the 80 mile trip to Prairie. One can imagine that the crews were more concerned about the car if entrained further back sloshing and derailing than they were about the hazards of an errant spark and gasoline vapor if placed in the more stable position directly behind the engine.







Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2017 01:23PM by J.B.Bane.