Recently restored were these tank cars, both kitbashed in August, 1993 by Bill Johann.

I have actually a group of 8 different tank cars from Johann, kitbashed and scrathbuilt, obtained either from eBay or the OO Inventory. These two cars are both part of pairs of HO cars modified for OO. These models are described briefly in the November, 1994 issue of The OO Road. 

The basic idea is a really large HO tank car will look like a somewhat smaller OO car. The models themselves are Walthers cars, Johann in the article scales the longer one at 57’ in OO and the shorter one at 47’ in OO. Of the two pair I think the bigger pair looks somewhat better on the layout, bigger is better in this case.

All four cars needed a lot of repair — these are rather fragile models — and there are still a few missing parts such as the end ladder on the car on the left. Still, fixing these four cars was a great end of summer project and they run great on the layout with my modern (70s-80s) era models.

As to the other cars hinted at earlier, the scratchbuilt car needs some soldering and will be fixed soon – it is metal and quite nice. The other three are kitbashed TankTrain cars. Of those, one is missing a lot of parts and will require a lot of work to get it going; those will also be the subject of some future article when they are together.