Bachmann - 70184 - Tank Car, Triple Dome, 40 Foot - Shell Oil - 1245

Model Information: The model was first made by Bachmann in the late 1960s. The early versions were also sold using their Parkways Industries label. It was eventually retired and replaced by a completely new tooling in 2012. The new tooling is different enough, that it is listed as a different series.

Prototype History: Triple Dome tank cars, while not as common as single-domes, are a railroad staple. They have been around since the first half of the 20th century.

The dome above tank cars serves as an expansion chamber as temperature affects the volume of any liquids contained within. With no dome, if the liquid did not 100% fill the tank, then it is possible for the liquid to slosh around inside the tank, causing instability and increasing the possibility of a derailment. The dome allows the tank to be slightly overfilled so that should the volume in the main section decrease due to colder temperatures or even a small leak, that there will still be sufficient liquid within to prevent sloshing. Similarly if temperature increases, the liquid can rise up inside the dome preventing excess pressure within the tank. While not as serious as an underfilled tank, an over-pressurized tank might present problems during unloading.

If you see three domes on a tank car it is because there are three separate compartments inside the tank car each containing a different liquid. This was desirable for many reasons.

Often times a delivery would consist of much less than a carload (LCL) of liquid. Remember the sloshing problem? So if you only had to fill a third of a tank with your commodity, then you can avoid the issue by using one of the three chambers within the tank car. Also, you might have several grades of a commodity to deliver such as unleaded, leaded and diesel fuel and you need them to be kept separate. Or you might be producing wine and you want your white wine kept separate from your red wine. Or maybe all three chambers had the same contents but were being delivered to three different customers. It can be very difficult to determine when one third of a single dome tank car has been discharged...

For all these reasons, three-dome tank cars were a common sight in the first half of the 20th century. However, with the rise of the interstate highway system and the modern trucking industry, LCL deliveries have primarily been accomplished with tanker trucks instead of tank cars and the three-dome tank car has gradually disappeared from the North American rail network.

Road Name History: Shell Oil Company is the United States-based subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, a multinational "oil major" of Anglo-Dutch origins, which is amongst the largest oil companies in the world. Approximately 22,000 Shell employees are based in the U.S. The U.S. head office is in Houston, Texas. Shell Oil Company, including its consolidated companies and its share in equity companies, is one of America's largest oil and natural gas producers, natural gas marketers, gasoline marketers and petrochemical manufacturers.

Shell is the market leader through approximately 25,000 Shell-branded gas stations in the U.S. which also serve as Shell's most visible public presence. Shell Oil Company is a 50/50 partner with the Saudi Arabian government-owned oil company Saudi Aramco in Motiva Enterprises, a refining and marketing joint venture which owns and operates three oil refineries on the Gulf Coast of the United States. The Shell Oil Company Warehouse, built in 1925 and located at 425 S. N. 16th Ave. Phoenix, Arizona. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Shell products include oils, fuels, and card services as well as exploration, production, and refining of petroleum products. The Shell Oil Refinery in Martinez, California, the first Shell refinery in the United States, supplies Shell and Texaco stations in the West and Midwest.

In 1997, Shell and Texaco entered into two refining/marketing joint ventures. One combined their Midwestern and Western operations and was known as Equilon. The other, known as Motiva, combined the Eastern and Gulf Coast operations of Shell Oil and Star Enterprise, itself a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Texaco.[6] After Texaco merged with Chevron in 2001, Shell purchased Texaco's shares in the joint ventures. In 2002, Shell began converting these Texaco stations to the Shell brand, a process that was to be completed by June 2004 and was called "the largest retail re-branding initiative in American business history."

Brand/Importer Information: Bachmann Industries (Bachmann Brothers, Inc.) is a Bermuda registered Chinese owned company, globally headquartered in Hong Kong; specializing in model railroading.

Founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the home of its North American headquarters, Bachmann is today part of the Kader group, who model products are made at a Chinese Government joint-venture plant in Dongguan, China. Bachmann's brand is the largest seller, in terms of volume, of model trains in the world. Bachmann primarily specializes in entry level train sets, and premium offerings in many scales. The Spectrum line is the high quality, model railroad product line, offered in N, HO, Large Scale, On30, and Williams O gauge all aimed for the hobbyist market. Bachmann is the producer of the famous railroad village product line known as "Plasticville." The turnover for Bachmann model trains for the year ended 31 December 2006 was approximately $46.87 million, a slight increase of 3.36% as compared to 2005.