The Freight Yard - 2220B - Tank Car, Single Dome, 50 Foot - Phillips 66 - 26773

Specific Item Information: MDC Roundhouse model decorated by The Freight Yard.

Model Information: This is a fairly nice quality tank car from MDC Roundhouse. It likely first appeared in the late 1980s. It appears to model a general service tank car and the road names and paint schemes seem to suggest this is what MDC had in mind. The Roundhouse models were available in both kit and RTR packaging. It doesn't have a ton of detail. Most versions were released with Rapido Couplers so it therefore qualifies as a late 1st generation model. Nevertheless, once the couplers are swapped out, it will look just fine on even the most modern of layouts due to the high print quality and molding on this model. Like all other N Scale toolings made by MDC Roundhouse, this one was acquired by Athearn in 2006. Eastern Seaboard Models has also sold these in custom paint schemes.

Prototype History: Larger, 50' Tank cars replaced their smaller predecessors in the late 1960s and 1970s. The Richmond Tank Car Company was one of several manufacturers to produce these general purpose railcars. They generally had about 20,000 gallon capacity and were used to transport many different commodities.

Road Name History: Lee Eldas and Frank Phillips founded the Anchor Oil and Gas Company in 1904 with the assistance of John Gibson, Frank's father-in-law. . They obtained leases near Bartlesville in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory (present Washington County, Oklahoma), and opened a Bartlesville office in 1905. By 1917, Phillips Petroleum was incorporated, and the first Phillips station was opened in Wichita, Kan., in 1927. An important lawsuit that made its way to the Supreme court occurred in 1921 involving Anchor Oil, "Anchor Oil Co. v. Gray, 256 U.S. 519". The company’s research into the uses of natural gas received further impetus in 1926, when it won a patent infringement suit brought against it by Union Carbide over Phillips’s process for separating hydrocarbon compounds.

In 1930, Anchor Oil Co. began looking for a new name and logo – something that would include the Phillips name while reflecting a stronger connection with the automobile. They chose "Pillips 66"

Brand/Importer Information: The Freight Yard was a hobby shop that did custom decoration and special runs of other manufacturers' N Scale products. It sold its custom products under several brands or collections: Premiere Editions, by The Freight Yard and Dreams Design.
It was located in Anaheim, California and then moved to 2006 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Established in the late 1980s, it stopped business under this name by the end of the 2000s.
The Freight Yard was owned and operated by Darren J. Cohen. Darren is now operating North Valley Trains.
The Freight Yard / Premiere Editions runs are usually available in series of two to twelve different numbers (suffixed A to M, with I not used).
The first two digits of the stock number correspond to the release year (9x being 199x, and 2x being 200x).