TANK CARS, MADISON HARDWARE CUSTOM TWO DOME – WELCOME TO CORNUCOPIA OF TOY TRAINS

MADISON HARDWARE TANK CARS

In the 1960’s Madison Hardware had a surplus of about 1,000 No. 6465 Two-Dome “Lionel Lines” Tank Cars in orange plastic with black plastic ends that they desired to sell. The owners of Madison contacted E.C. Kraemer who was doing painting work for the company at the time. Kraemer came up with the idea of re-painting the cars and re-labeling them with 18 different road names (gasoline and chemical companies). He took several of the surplus cars, disassembled them, sanded the lettering and rivets off the bodies, re-painted them various colors, and added a clear plastic pressure sensitive sticker (referred to as decals by Kraemer) with decoration for the new road names. A clear spray coating was applied to dull the sticker. The cars were then re-assembled using the original black plastic ends. Madison was pleased with the result and ordered 55 each of the 18 different road names. Each road name had a designated body color and all of the cars were numbered (except one). Five different numbers were used for the cars as shown on the following table. The Hooker car was not numbered.

According to Kraemer, most of the re-decorated tank cars were subsequently lost in a fire at one of Madison Hardware’s warehouses. However, a few hundred of the cars apparently did survive the fire and were sold by Madison as part of made up sets or for separate sale. It is not known how many of the surviving cars were eventually issued by Madison Hardware. Today, the cars occasionally appear for sale at train meets and at auctions. There is a growing interest in the cars among collectors and the prices have been increasing as a result.

The following is a listing of the 18 road names used for the re-painted tank cars with the original body color and number as approved by Madison.

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ROAD NAME	BODY COLOR	NUMBER
ATLAS OIL	Gray	6428
Borden’s Milk	White	6524
Diamond Chemicals	Gray	6525
Deep – Rock	Black	6524
DOW	Gray	6427
DUPONT	White	6426
DuPONT (Name in Oval)	White	6426
ESSO	Red	6427
GULF	Silver	6427
HOOKER	Orange	None
Mobilgas	Silver	6426
Republic	Silver	6525
SHELL	Yellow	6428
Sinclair	Silver	6428
SUNOCO	Blue	6426
SUN OIL CO.	Black	6426
TEXACO	Silver	6525
Union Starch	Silver	6524

According to Kraemer, all of the cars listed above were created using No. 6465 Orange Tank Cars with plastic trucks. However, many examples of the cars have been documented with older tank car bodies and metal trucks. Often the bodies of these cars are painted a different color than listed above and often have the ends painted the same color as the body. In addition to complete cars, there are reports of many of these tank car bodies being available for sale by Madison Hardware. In fact, some of the car bodies obtained from Madison show evidence of melting which most likely resulted from the bodies having been exposed to the warehouse fire. The total number of these tank cars, both using the original Lionel No. 6465 orange tank cars and older tank car bodies, in addition to separate car bodies, as reported by collectors would indicate that more of these car and car bodies likely exist than the original 55 of each road name reported by E.C. Kraemer.

The above information was obtained from an article by E.C. Kraemer that was published in the January 2017 issue of the Train Collectors Quarterly a publication of the Train Collectors Association.

Depicted below the tank cars are several of the original stickers used for the decoration of the Madison Tank Cars. Apparently, there was a surplus of these stickers that were produced at the time the original tank cars were decorated for Madison Hardware. The surplus stickers found their way into the hands of various hobby shops and ultimately their customers who then used the surplus stickers to decorate their own tank cars. This would explain why many of the Madison Tank Cars found today were made up using tank cars other than the No. 6465 Orange Body Tank Cars originally decorated for Madison by Kraemer.
“text by Russ MacNair”