Tank Wagon Liveries

NB The colours used were obtained by sampling colour pictures, they may however vary from the true colour, use as a rough guide only

See also the section Goods Rolling Stock Design - Rail Tanks for additional liveries

Most tank wagons have always been privately owned. Chassis are usually black (but see Class A tanks below) and early tank wagon barrels were usually painted either red or black (the red varied from red-brown to pillar box red) with white lettering. A less common colour was 'stone' (similar to Humbrol 'Light Earth') which could be lettered in either white or red. It is worth noting that tank numbers were often applied to the ends of the tank, where they were less likely to be obliterated or dissolved by spillage's from the filling dome. Markings on tank wagons are often offset to either end of the tank barrel for the same reason.

Liquid products tankers are basically divided into two groups, Class `A' for volatile dangerously flammable liquids such as petrol and class `B' for heavier, less flammable substances like heavy oils, liquid rubber, bitumen and molasses.

The RCH official livery for volatile Class A liquid tanks, such as petroleum, was from 1907 to 1939, a stone body colour with a red band extending right round the body about half way up the tank about 6 inches (15 cm) wide. The solebars were to be painted red with black running gear (this was required for all dangerous cargo but does not seem to have applied to gunpowder vans. The band around the tank was supposed to be applied over the company logo, or the livery would be applied to either side, above and below the line. In some cases the livery was applied over the line however.

In 1939 the rules were relaxed slightly, the red stripe extending only part way along the sides of the tank (typically a quarter of the way from each end of the tank), and aluminium was permitted as the body colour.

This was rescinded during the war due to the danger of enemy air attack and a uniform matt dark grey tank with black chassis was adopted (some tanks were painted in camouflage of two shades of grey).

After the war the aluminium was again permitted for Class A tanks and the red band on the tank was not reinstated but solebars were again supposed to be red (this seems to have taken a while to appear however). On the large bogie 'frameless' tankers the red paint is confined to the short sub-chassis above the bogies. Class A wagons do not have heavy black staining to the body, petrol is pretty clean stuff in the main but as with all rolling stock they do get stained and dirty in use.

For less volatile Class B liquids, heavy oils and tars, the 1907 specification was red oxide, this was a pretty lax specification and colours used varied from pillar box red to a light muddy brown similar to old rust. Where the wagons were used for tar and the like this colour scheme proved impractical and in the main black became and has remained standard.

The large six pointed star seen on tank wagons was introduced in 1913, and indicated the wagon was suitable for fast traffic (that is for trains with average speeds of 35 miles per hour and stops at intervals of no more than 40 miles). It was sometimes, rather optimistically and incorrectly, applied to some very old wagons such as a rectangular tank wagons on wooden chassis with a nine foot wheelbase, however this may have been simply for the purposes of publicity photographs. The star was 2 feet across and either black (on white or yellow tanks) or white.

Fig___ Examples of Class A and Class B tank wagon liveries

Changes in policy during the 1960's produced a number of companies owning tank wagons which were hired out to the oil companies as required. In about 1974 logo's were removed from the wagons, although I have seen a photograph of a BP tanker bearing a small stick-on BP shield pasted above the data and warning panels at the left hand end of the tank in November 1984.

The introduction of TOPS meant that all vehicles had to have their owner identified (rather than just the firm using the vehicle), a small yellow plate was therefore added to the left hand end of the solebar to identify the owning company and the individual wagon number. These plates were all in place by 1970 but the older wagon numbers remained painted on the sides of the tanks, for example United Molasses owned their tanks and had numbers prefixed UM but they still had the yellow TOPS plate on the chassis. The `Hazchem' warning panels were first introduced on British Rail in the mid 1970's (about 1975 or 76 I believe), and these days they provide a welcome splash of colour to the lower left of the tank body or (less commonly) painted on a plate fitted to the chassis.

Fig ___ Hazchem symbols used on railway tankers


The new edition of the highway code may contain coloured illustrations of the standard Hazchem symbols. The numbers and letters in the upper box give the emergency services vital information on what equipment is required to deal with a leak or fire. 1 means a water jet can be used, 2 means a water 'fog' can be used, 3 means foam should be used and 4 means a dry powder fire extinguisher should be used. There are usually two letters, the first tells you if you need to wear protective equipment, the second tells you what you need to do to deal with a leak (dilute it or contain it), the combination also tells you whether a 'violent reaction' is a possible hazard. The letters used are P, R, S, T, W, X, Y and Z. The number in the middle box in the 'United Nations' official number for the chemical being carried. The bottom box is the emergency contact name and telephone number and in the small box beside it appears the contact company name. Examples of Hazchem data of interest to model makers include: 2PE/1073 oxygen 2PE/1005 ammonia, 2RE/1013 carbon dioxide, 2PE/1230 methanol, 2P/2789 acetic acid, 3R/1802 phosphoric acid, 2R/1798 hydrochloric acid. Although bitumen is normally solid in transit it is flammable and when carried by road it is required to display 2W/7033.

After about 1974 cleaning of oil tank wagons was generally discontinued, so Class B tanks often have heavy dark staining on their sides round the filling domes and the class A tanks have lighter coloured stains streaking their bodies in the same areas.

Pressurised gas tank wagons first appeared in the 1950's and have been built on both bogie and four wheeled chassis. Large tank wagons for carrying ammonia, nitrogen, oxygen, chlorine and carbon dioxide, appeared in the 1960's. These tanks, and chemical tankers carrying volatile liquids which give off a vapour such as hydro cyanic acid (HCN), all have a white or very light grey body. The original 1950s markings included yellow and red stripes on the lower sides with a red rectangle with yellow centre wrapped round the corners at each end. These tanks recieved a sun shield in 1952 and by the nmid 1950s the rectangular ferry plate was in use on the left hand end of the solebars (see also the Kitbashing section).

Fig___ Original pressurised gas tank livery

By 1960 this had changed to a white tank with a vertical red stripe painted round each end of the tank (as on my models). The ICI tanks shows were used for chlorine traffic, these unfitted tanks had a long working life, the 10'6" wheelbase chassis tanks were introduced in the 1940s and were finally withdrawn in about 1980. This changed again (I believe) in the late 1960's, possibly as late as the very early 1970's, to a white tank with a horizontal orange stripe running right round the body to indicate the contents are carried under pressure. Where the material carried was a 'Class A' substance (such as liquefied petroleum gas) the solebars of the tank are painted red.

Fig___ Pressurised gas tanks

The Peco LPG tank kit (KNR P50) can be back-dated to the original 1962 Shell BP design by adding the side loading hatches, a 4mm diameter acess hatch on one end, a tmm diameter pate on the centre of the other end and a couple of pressure relief valves on top at one end. The basic livery was originally as shown below, by the later 1960s the shell and BP logos had been removed and these tanks were in use by other firms. The model shown below is for a layout set in the later 1960s and hence does not require the logos on the tank sides. BR>
Fig___ Model of pressurised gas tank

The Peco gas tank and the simple W&T tank wagon kit, producing a lagged (smooth sided) tank to fit a standard Peco chassis, can be liveried with a wrapper prepared on a table beforehand.

Molasses are use for a range of products, industrial ethyl-alcohol is made by fermenting the stuff then distilling the result. This then gets something nasty such as wood naphtha or pyridine is added to try and stop people drinking it (pure alcohol is extremely poisonous), in the case of methylated spirit a violet dye is also added.

Fig ___ Molasses tank wagons

Pure alcohol is in turn used to make acetone (nail varnish remover), acetaldehyde (a nasty but important chemical), acetic acid (the industrial form of vinegar) and more recently ethylene gas. Alcohol may be shipped out in railway tank wagons where it is classed as a Class A liquid.

One point to note is that the Class A tanks are not allowed to use gravity discharge via a bottom valve, this was banned following a spillage and fire. Hence if looking at Peco ten foot wheelbase tanks you have to carve off the small stub on the tank top beside the filling dome when using these for Class A traffic such as petrol. This stub is a square section post leading down inside the wagon to a valve at the bottom. The hand-wheel was not fitted (to avoid some idiot opening the valve in transit), instead the hand wheels were held at the discharge points for use by local staff.

The W&T twin tank wagon kit, sold as a gas tank wagon, resembles a type which was used by a Scottish firm for oil traffic, however this livery would be very difficult to apply from individual lettering. With a little tinkering this kit makes a reasonable gas tank wagon for the GWR, LMS or LNER (see Fig ___).

The Vitriol tank kit supplied by Fleetline, is an example of a British Railways 10 ton (load) de-mountable tank used for acid. The chassis was painted in standard company or British Railways style and the tank was often in the livery of the leasing firm, if not it was either red or black with the product carried listed on the side as shown below.

If one uses the tubes and filling domes of the twin gas tank kit with the frames and wagons of two Vitriol tanks one ends up with a pair of de-mountable tanks, carried one per wagon, resembling those used for the shipment of tetraethyl lead, usually just called ethyl lead, to oil refineries for adding to petrol. Tetraethyl lead was the most widely used anti-knock agent in petrol up to the 1980's since when it has been replaced by methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) or mixtures of methanol and tert-butyl alcohol. The tank itself was a silver 'bare metal' colour when built (early 1950's) but was soon stained to a dull grey and streaked with darker shades in traffic. The chassis was black with fast traffic stars.

Fig ___ Demountable chemical tank wagon liveries

Further options for lettering kit built and home made tank wagons are discussed in the section on Livery Modifications.

In view of the limited number of liveries available in RTR it is easiest to simply identify these and comment on modifications possible.

The only RTR tank wagons in pre war Class A livery currently available are the National Benzole wagons from Minitrix and now also from Peco. The National Benzole company was formed in 1919, Benzole refers to an additive they employed, derived from coal tar. Their petrol was very popular, when rationing was ended it was the best selling brand in the UK. They were taken over by BP in 1957.

Royal Daylight (Peco) was a trading name for a branch of Esso,

which in this country started life as the Anglo American Oil Company and also had the splendid trade name of Pratts Motor Spirit under its banner, although the Pratts logo was not applied to rolling stock after 1935. The models illustrate the red oxide body colour of the 1907 specification, in one of Bill Hudson's books on private owner wagons there is a photograph of this livery as applied in 1926.

Both the Peco & Minitrix Esso tanks are in immediate post war livery, I have no information on the Esso Graham Farish tank, but the oval `Esso' logo was introduced in 1938/39. The use of the Esso logo, without the oval, dates from about 1935, replacing the Pratts and Anglo American Oil Company logos. The early esso logo only lacked the oval surround, so a lick of black paint would produce a wagon for 1935-39.

Shell-BP was a joint operation formed in 1932 which lasted until 1976 when they again split their distribution networks. Not all tanks were marked in the joint logo however, the petrol retail outlets were not joined and some tanks had BP or Shell liveries, these were usually class A tanks with liveries mentioning Motor Spirit. On some class A tanks the word SHELL (not the logo) was on one side with BP on the other, both in lettering about three feet high.

BP was originally the Anglo Persian Oil Corporation (formed in 1909), and some of its stock was marked APOC, British Petroleum was a smaller company absorbed by APOC in the 1920's and the APOC livery seems to have disappeared by the late 1920's, replaced first by British Petroleum (in serif script), and after 1932 by the joint Shell-BP logo. The SHELL-BP class B tank from Peco is in post war livery, but remove the serifs on the BP and it will serve for pre war stock. The Minitrix SHELL-BP tank dates from the 1960's, and the SHELL-BP rectangular tank from Graham Farish was in this livery, or something very like it from the 1930's through to at least 1961.

The Graham Farish 100 ton bogie tankers are all in applicable liveries, for the period from their introduction to the discontinuance of painting after 1974.

The Lima tank wagon is not a specifically British prototype as far as I am aware, however it will certainly serve for some of the Procor owned modern designs (it does rather resemble the china clay slurry tanks built for ECC in 1964, see Fig ___). I have no information on the Amoco livery.

Fig ___ Chemical tank liveries

Milk tanks were unusual in that the chassis was provided by the railway company but the tank itself was the property of the dairy company operating the wagon. Milk tanks are considered separately in the chapter on railway operations. Other users of tank wagons were firms shipping bitumen, tar and chemicals, as well as fish and mineral oils. Some of the heavier materials, such as molasses and bitumen (or `Cable Compound'), would require the provision of a six wheeled chassis. The only example of a non-milk six wheeled tank I have seen a photograph of had a black tank with white lettering, CABLE COMPOUND about a foot high on the sides. There was a model produced in OO of a similar tank wagon, again with a black tank but with MOLASSES about 18 inches (46 cm) high on the side.

Fig ___ 6 wheeled non-milk tank

The 4 wheel square 'tar' tank liveries from Graham Farish, are correct at least for pre war stock. Rectangular tanks such as these were in operation carrying petroleum oils on main lines into the 1960's, and some in industrial use are probably still going.

The railway companies used several designs of tank wagon, ranging from creosote tankers supplying depots producing sleepers, to gas cylinder tanks used for delivering gas to outlying stations, refilling coaching stock lighting tanks and supplying kitchen coaches. The liveries were a mixed bag and rather than try and explain them in the text I have included sketches of examples in the livery drawings.

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