Model Trains and Things

I see from the latest Australian Model Railway Magazine that Austrains have brought out a model of a NSWGR 4-wheel rail tanker that was used by Shell back in the day.

Sadly because of trademark issues Austrains were not given permission to release the wagon with the correct lettering so they’ve offered it in three other Australian oil company colour schemes and from the photos it looks like a very decent model.

However this particular 4-wheel rail tanker wasn’t the only in use in New South Wales. Esso had at least one in their fleet and it often appeared at the Esso depot in Bathurst.

That’s where I grabbed these photos late one afternoon. Sadly I didn’t record the date but it would have been no earlier than 1978 when I was posted to Bathurst and probably no later than about 1980.

This 4-wheel tanker had a capacity of 3,000 gallons (approx. 11,246 litres) and was obviously painted black … although that had weathered to something closer to a rusty grey by the time I photographed it.

If you compare this to the tanker that was the basis of the Austrains model you will see that there are detail differences … the walkway is shorter on the Esso tanker and the access ladder is in the centre of the wagon rather than towards the end.

The Esso depot in Bathurst was located in Russell Street just beyond the underpass at the eastern end of the yard.

I should also point out that none of the 4-wheel or bogie petrol tankers that ran in NSW actually belonged to the NSWGR. Each tanker belonged to the fuel company whose name appeared on the tanker so the one in these photos was owned by Esso.

John Beckhaus … in his 1970 booklet ‘Railway Freight Wagons of New South Wales (long out of print) … notes that in 1970 the 4-wheel petrol tankers that were in use at that time had capacities ranging from 2,500 gallons to 5,000 gallons.

Fuel tankers have always been of interest to me and last week Brad Peadon published an interesting recent photo of a couple of refurbished tankers here. That prompted me to dig through my collection of fuel tankers to see what I had to show you.

In New South Wales in later years the government railways coded all their fuel tankers ast NTAF and that code covered quite a wide variety of tankers. The first one I want to show you is this shorty that I photographed in Orange sometime in the early to mid 90’s.

Back in those days there was a small fuel depot adjacent to where Franklin Road crosses the line leading down to the station and a siding ran up a short incline to service that depot.

The next two photos were taken in Bathurst circa 1980. Yes, that’s a 4 wheel tanker and I was quite surprised to find it sitting in the Esso depot’s siding late one afternoon when I went down to fuel the car (back in those days if you had an account at the depot you had a key to the bowsers and booked up fuel on an honour system).

Seeing a tanker sitting in the siding was nothing new but I’d never seen a 4-wheel tanker there before … or after this one occurrence.

While I’m still back in Bathurst here are four more photos I took there. The first three were all on an up train that rolled into Bathurst late one afternoon around 1986-87. In order of appearance we’ve got a three dome tanker, a two dome tanker and a longer tanker that has no domes.

The rust pattern on the shed behind the train is also interesting.

The last photo from Bathurst shows a much longer tanker that I spotted sitting in the storage sidings behind the down platform in the mid 1980s.

The last photo was taken in Lithgow. This short tanker was sitting in the up yard sometime between January 1977 and March 1978.