Fuel Wholesalers

 On AIR 1 I tried to locate a fuel wholesaler at every small town. I will actually do better this time.

At least in the era I model, 1952, fuel dealers were often times railroad served, and even smallish towns might have more than one. Here in Winchester, for example there are AT LEAST five still doing business, and I have found remnants of others so that I estimate there were, at one time eight fuel dealers here in Winchester, a city with a population of 26,000.

Current hobby press suggests locating several dealers on one spur, which I plan to do in my two main urban areas.

My question was what petroleum producers should be represented in my area? What I found out was, in short, pretty much all of them. The major oil companies had a world wide presence by 1952, and would have dealers distributing their products all over the country.

Some more than others, and some might be anachronistic. It’s not likely you’d see a “Union Oil of California” tank car in West Virginia, but you’d see Union Oil Dealers. After some research and a lot of help from Mike Ritschdorff, Gulf, Pure, And Esso would be prominent (Esso being Eastern States Standard Oil, the Standard oil representative after the break-up). I want a plausible product sign on the layout.

What I want to be careful of is spotting the correct private company tank car at the appropriate dealer.so for example if I have a model of a wholesaler with Texaco signage it should not get a Mobile tank car spotted next to it. I went to great lengths to remove colorful private owner tank cars from my fleet. Maybe to good a job! I’m not sure I have any. I know I have plenty of plain black UTLX, GATX, SHPX tank cars to do any job I need.

Paul Grayless mentions a two track spur serving multiple fuel dealers, one for tank cars, feeding underground piping, and the other for boxcars of packaged goods a wholesaler might need. 

Quite often in photographs, or just driving around, I have seen feed mills with signs reading, “Feed, Seed, Lumber, Fuel”, sort of a “Rural King” of the 1950’s. One stop shopping for the rural consumer. And on a 1952 era model railroad, all rail served!

Do you have at least one fuel dealer on your layout? If you have multiple town, shouldn’t you have at least two? If you do have multiple dealers how is yours laid out?

Do you have multiple dealers per spur?





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