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4  of these sold for an average price of: 9.889.884 of these sold for an average price of: 9.88
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N Scale - Life-Like - S784A - Tank Car, Triple Dome, 40 Foot - Shell Oil - 1105 The image shown is the same body type though not necessarily the same road name or road number.

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Stock NumberS784A
BrandLife-Like
ManufacturerRoco
Body StyleMehano Tank Car 40 Foot 3-Dome
Prototype VehicleTank Car, Triple Dome, 40 Foot (Details)
Road or Company NameShell Oil (Details)
Reporting MarksSCCX
Road or Reporting Number1105
Paint Color(s)Orange
Print Color(s)Black and Red Lettering
Coupler TypeRapido Hook
Wheel TypeNickel-Silver Plated Metal
Wheel ProfileDeep Flange
Item CategoryRolling Stock (Freight)
Model TypeTank Car
Model Subtype3-Dome
Model Variety40 Foot
Prototype RegionNorth America
Prototype EraNA Era II: Late Steam (1901 - 1938)
Scale1/160



Specific Item Information: Car underside reads Made In Yugoslavia
Model Information: This car was first produced by Mehano in the late 1960s or early 1970s. It is essentially a knock-off of the Atlas/Roco 3-dome model from 1967. It was imported by MRC, Model Power and Life-Like. Life-Like later produced a Chinese knock-off of this car. Hence the Life-Like model is a knock-off of a knock-off. Meta-knockoff?
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:
Life-Like Products LLC (now Life-Like Toy and Hobby division of Wm. K. Walthers) was a manufacturer of model railroad products and was based in Baltimore, Maryland.

It was founded in the 1950s by a company that pioneered extruded foam ice chests under the Lifoam trademark. Because ice chests are a summer seasonal item, the company needed a way to keep the factory operating year round. As model railroading was becoming popular in the post-war years, they saw this as an opportunity and so manufactured extruded foam tunnels for model trains. Over the years, Life-Like expanded into other scenery items, finally manufacturing rolling stock beginning in the late 1960s. At some point in the early 1970s, Life-Like purchased Varney Inc. and began to produce the former Varney line as its own.

The Canadian distributor for Life-Like products, Canadian Hobbycraft, saw a missing segment in market for Canadian model prototypes, and started producing a few Canadian models that were later, with a few modifications, offered in the US market with US roadnames.

In 2005, the company, now known as Lifoam Industries, LLC, decided to concentrate on their core products of extruded foam and sold their model railroad operations to Wm. K. Walthers.

In June 2018, Atlas and Walthers announced to have reached an agreement under which all Walthers N scale rolling stock tooling, including the former Life-Like tooling, will be purchased by Atlas.

Read more on Wikipedia and The Train Collectors Association.
Manufacturer Information:
The company was founded in 1960 by Ing. Heinz Rössler and started with a plastic Minitanks series of military vehicles. After export to the USA became successful, the model line was expanded with model trains in HO scale and the smaller N scale. TT scale was also subsequently added to the product line. The model rail product line covers many European countries including Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Spain, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands, and also the USA.

On July 15, 2005 ROCO Modellspielwaren GmbH was declared bankrupt. From July 25 the company continues as Modelleisenbahn GmbH, but still uses the Roco brand and associated logo. On October 1, 2007, distribution of the 'Minitank' product series was assigned to the German model car manufacturer Herpa.

Since February 2008 Modelleisenbahn also owns Fleischmann, which like Roco had gone bankrupt. The two companies continue as separate brands under Modelleisenbahn GmbH, while benefiting from economies of scale through joined development projects, marketing and procurement.

From Wikipedia
Item created by: RoadRailer on 2017-02-08 10:57:43. Last edited by CNW400 on 2020-06-09 09:09:02

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