Among the cars from Bill Gilbert was this Heinz Vinegar tank car. A model that was marketed in HO by AHM, this is just about the easiest OO conversion ever.

A scale drawing of this car may be found on page 31 the Rolling Stock Plan Book that was put out by Carstens originally way back in 1957, with my copy being of the 1971 printing. The dimensions given tell the tale of a car that is not HO at all but actually exactly scaled for OO.

Bill had equipped the car with Kadee couplers and Schorr Bettendorf trucks, which are the type of trucks seen in the scale drawing. However, the prototype photo in the Carstens book shows the car decorated the same way (but with slightly larger lettering) riding on arch bar trucks, so with a number of those on hand I switched the car over to a nice pair them, also by Schorr.

The scale drawing is of car 203, the photo is of car 204, and this model is car 208. It is unique car but one to keep your eyes peeled for at a show. It won’t be too hard to find one to equip with OO trucks and the car is dead on for American OO, 1/76.

(And, for any HO gauger finding this article on a search, unfortunately it is well over scale for HO. Why this was put out so overscale is not clear to me, perhaps it was simply to visually match more modern cars in the typical train set.).