During my visit to the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry one of my main objectives was to capture photos of the little known, little photographed pieces of rolling stock, one of these is an old tank car on site. ARRX 1666 is an old riveted type tank car and from the information I found on it, the car was built in 1916. I haven’t seen many photos between the construction era and the 1930s with tank cars, though I have seen them, it’s unknown when this car came to Alaska.

There isn’t a lot of information on this tank car, but I am almost positive it was built by Union Tank Car since said company’s name is stenciled on the sill which you can see in one of the photos. There isn’t anything for its capacity but I believe it’s an 8,000-gallon tank. An interesting thing is one stencil says UTC Co. Seward Alaska on one side, and UTLX on the other. Around WWII when oil was beginning to be a big commodity tanks cars were brought here and were either leased by Union Tank Car, or were United States Transportation Corp cars used for the military in Alaska. I don’t know when the Alaska Railroad started to roster their own tank cars but I can say it was likely after WWII. It’s highly likely this tank was purchased from the Union Tank Car lease fleet.

The stenciling says Waste Oil Only which means it carried used oil from locomotives and equipment. I can’t say for sure what happened to the waste oil, but I have heard from a couple old heads that some section houses and buildings burned waste oil for heat. The length of the car is around 37 feet from coupler to coupler which was a standard length for cars 100 years ago, and rides on old friction bearing trucks that would have replaced the Arch Bar trucks that would have been likely used. After 1918 welded tank cars debuted and greater capacities were gained, and eventually the ARR would have these 10,000-gallon cars. This car saw service well into the 1970s on the ARR albeit in captive service and most likely never went too far or rarely roamed far. The retirement date is unknown but I assume by the end of the 1970s it was retired.

To my knowledge this is the only intact car of its type left in Alaska. At the time of this writing, I was made aware of four surviving tank cars of this type located near Sterling Alaska. For those who are used to today’s tank cars, this car is tiny compared to 30,000-gallon oil cans, and shows how far tanks have advanced.

Pictures taken 05/01/2021