Thanks Mike, I was wondering if any of these were left. Many years ago AHM made a decent model of this thing. They used to be fairly common on certain routes. Question of the day. Does the car get lighter as you fill it up?
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Helium is transported nowadays in the liquid form and is used to cool superconducting magnets for such things as MRI units and research equipment. You can carry a lot more Helium as a liquid than as a gas and yes, it is heavy. Not as much as something like Carbon Tetrachloride or Iodoform, but it is still heavy.
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This car has been up-dated at some point, as it now has roller bearings and the double shelf couplers as used on other tank cars. I guess that I will have to up-grade my two unaltered AHM HO models. At one time I had three of these HO cars in new condition, but converted one of them to carry track sections. I removed the tank area and bracing and a portion of the roof at each end creating a short bulkhead flat car. which got painted in my wreck train scheme. I am very glad to see that one of the prototype cars has been saved.
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| Posted by jtull7 on May 12, 2014 | |
Trapped within a subterranean expanse of rock near Amarillo, Texas, is the world’s largest supply of helium, the Federal Helium Reserve. Most of it is on my best friend’s large ranch on the Canadian Breaks north of Amarillo. Helium is found in small quantities in other places, like Russia, but the Federal Helium Reserve is the only known place on the planet with the kind of rock formation that can store helium.
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