Government of Alberta Tank cars

[Missaberoad]

A question for our Canadian contingent. (or simply those with great knowledge of freight cars)

During the 1970's and 80's the province of Alberta leased a number of CTC-111 tank cars from Procor/UTLX.

http://www.nakina.net/photos/prox/prox058010.jpg

These have been a pretty popular choice with manufacturers being made in a number of scales.

My question is what service were these cars in?
Also how many were there and what was their service life?
nakina.net shows 58000-58027 (28 cars) being removed from the ORER in 2003/04.

That being said I'm not sure if the series was all Alberta cars or if there were more and if they remained in that scheme/service.

Any light anyone can shine on this would be most helpful...

Thanks

[Scottl]

I've never seen one before.  Interesting.

[learmoia]

I've never seen one before.  Interesting.

Me either.. and no placards so it's not a for hazmat.

~Ian

[Scottl]

I speculate that it might have been around the time the early oil sands projects like Syncrude were getting going.  Perhaps the gov't was trying to help them get the product to market in absence of pipelines or local markets.  Most of the heavy oil would have gone to the Gulf Coast in those days.  That sounds like something that would have happened in those days.

[eja]

The Canadian Freight Car Gallery http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/displayrailway.pl?o=procor#tank  seems to indicate that this is one of series of two.

The other one can be seen here

http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=prox58011&o=procor

[Missaberoad]

I speculate that it might have been around the time the early oil sands projects like Syncrude were getting going.  Perhaps the gov't was trying to help them get the product to market in absence of pipelines or local markets.  Most of the heavy oil would have gone to the Gulf Coast in those days.  That sounds like something that would have happened in those days.

My educated guess had me leaning towards Syncrude or the Lloydminister upgrader, however the lack of placards makes me think that might be a dead end.
There is a few things they ship out of the patch that aren't hazardous tho so its a possibility...

The Canadian Freight Car Gallery http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/displayrailway.pl?o=procor#tank  seems to indicate that this is one of series of two.
The other one can be seen here
http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=prox58011&o=procor

It does, however there were other cars in this scheme besides those 2...

Chris's site also has this photo, that thickens the plot.

http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=prox73931&o=procor

Also while not a confirmation that they existed, Athearn chose other numbers in the low 580xx series.

[learmoia]

What about asphalt or tar?

http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=prox58011detail1&o=procor

~Ian

[Missaberoad]

What about asphalt or tar?

http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=prox58011detail1&o=procor

~Ian

Definitely a possibility, they ship Asphalt out of Lloyd which the Alberta Government had an interest in in the 1970s, and it wouldn't require a placard in Canada.

[learmoia]

Looking at the residue on that 3rd picture and the fact it was equipped with heaters.. ....  I cant tell if the first 2 we discussed had heaters /steam lines or not

Also Athearn did a different initial than PROX, so maybe there are several groups of cars (well beyond 3).

~ian

[cv_acr]

Also Athearn did a different initial than PROX, so maybe there are several groups of cars (well beyond 3).

Athearn did UTLX, which is the same cars as the PROX ones. Procor didn't use their own PROX reporting marks until 1982. Before that, they used the reporting marks of parent Union Tank Car, so Procor cars bore UTLX marks. Most were gradually re-marked from UTLX to PROX in the mid 1980s.

[cv_acr]

These have been a pretty popular choice with manufacturers being made in a number of scales.

It'd be amazing if some manufacturer actually made this type of PROCOR built car, instead of putting the paint schemes on similar size RTC and ACF cars, but tank designs are varied and quite specific.

[Missaberoad]

It'd be amazing if some manufacturer actually made this type of PROCOR built car, instead of putting the paint schemes on similar size RTC and ACF cars, but tank designs are varied and quite specific.

I should have been more specific that the paint scheme has been a popular choice, put on inaccurate models 

On that subject however I wonder considering the corporate connection how close the Procor built cars were to Utlx cars of that Era?