PROTOTYPE AND BACKGROUND INFO:

The General American tank car fleet includes more than 59,000 cars representing nearly 70 different types that serve the chemical, petroleum, transportation, agriculture, food, mineral, and plastics industries. Major car categories include general-service and high-pressure tank cars, as well as specialized cars designed to transport acids and other hazardous materials. Customer logos occasionally appear on General American leased cars, which can be seen operating across North America on both major railroads and short lines.

Introduced by the General American Transportation Corporation (GATC) in the late 1960s, the 20,000-gallon tank car became a mainstay of modern rail transportation for medium-density liquids such as chemicals, vegetable oils, and fertilizers. These non-insulated, welded steel, straight-barrel cars formed a significant part of the General American leasing fleet and remained in active service for more than 40 years.

Throughout their service lives, many of these cars transitioned from transporting high-grade chemicals to carrying lower-priority commodities such as fuel oil or maintenance-of-way water. As with other General American lease equipment, customer logos could occasionally be found on the cars, which regularly operate in interchange service throughout North America.

The cars varied by production run, featuring differences in body bolster designs and tank course construction. With their medium-capacity design, they filled the gap between smaller, older tank cars and the larger 30,000-gallon models. Many were originally painted in colorful “billboard” leasing schemes that made them especially distinctive.

Athearn offers two body styles for these models: the “Type 30” (acid service) and the “Type 40” (general service). Like the prototypes, the models feature a wide variety of top fittings, outlets, brake arrangements, and other details, allowing Athearn to accurately reproduce the many variants used to transport commodities such as chemicals and industrial products, heavy fuel oils and asphalt, liquid fertilizers, and food grade oils.

MODEL FEATURES:

• All models are representative of prototypical paint schemes
• Separately applied brake wheel and ladders
• Weighted for trouble-free operation
• Body mounted McHenry operating scale knuckle couplers
• Replacement parts available
• 70 or 100-ton Roller Bearing trucks with animated spinning bearing caps per prototype
• Machined metal wheels with RP25 contours operate on all popular brands of track
• Fully-assembled and ready to run out of the box
• Highly-detailed, injection-molded body
• Painted and printed for realistic decoration
• Window packaging for easy viewing plus interior plastic blister safely holds the model for convenient storage

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