Flyer no. 912 Koppers tank car
This S gauge model highlighted the chemical industry’s ties to railroading
This model highlighted the chemical industry’s ties with railroading.
TTHE S GAUGE FLYER line included more chemical tank cars than did Lionel’s, and they had greater detail and more names. Among the finest of them was the no. 912, which publicized the Koppers Co., a well-respected manufacturer of chemicals based in Pittsburgh.
Novel model
For a toy train manufacturer to develop models of tank cars was an obvious decision. Single- and double-dome cars carrying petroleum products, chemicals, agricultural items, and other liquids were seen on most railroads. So in the prewar and postwar eras, Lionel and its rivals offered replicas of single-dome and then doubledome oil cars. The tank cars were simple in their design: a cylinder riding atop a sheetmetal or plastic frame with trucks and couplers attached.
In 1954, engineers at Gilbert realized that by surrounding the single dome with a plastic platform and having a ladder extend down to the frame, they could proclaim the tank car to be a chemical car. Splash on paint, and the Flyer line heralded the eye-catching no. 910 Gilbert Chemicals car, originally planned to promote Celanese Chemicals.
New name
A year later, Gilbert negotiated with the Koppers Co. to rename its chemical tank for that long-established producer of chemicals and plastics. Founded by Heinrich Koppers in Chicago in 1912 and moved to Pittsburgh in 1915, the business later became part of the empire overseen by financier Andrew Mellon. A skyscraper in downtown Pittsburgh served as the Koppers hub.
During and after the war, Koppers expanded its operations to capitalize on the development of new by-products of the coal and petroleum industries. Assorted plastics formed using styrene and polyethylene joined the Koppers inventory, and tank cars with the firm’s name became commonplace.
It made sense, therefore, for Gilbert to work with Koppers on the tanker painted black over a black or gray plastic body shell secured to either a type-IV die-cast metal frame or a type-II plastic frame with a brake wheel and diamond markers. Designers added gold sans-serif lettering and a paper label. Other details ran from black handrails to ladders painted to match or finished with copper or nickel.
The 912 appeared in the consumer catalog for 1955 as a component of two sets and as a separate-sale item priced at $5.
For each of the next two years, it was used in one set, and its separate-sale price rose to $5.95. In 1957, the tanker, like other Flyer items, was assigned a five-digit number (24306).
Decision makers at Gilbert could never have known that Koppers would eventually become the largest producer of railroad crossties for Class 1 railroads in North America. The ties were treated with chemicals to prevent warpage and deterioration of the wood.
How fitting that an S gauge chemical tank car from the 1950s should introduce thousands of modelers to the name of a business essential to the welfare of full-size railroads today. – Roger Carp