I thought a tank truck would look nice parked near our Chama inspired oil loading dock. The gas station on our layout is Texaco, and Texaco was and still is big in the Durango, CO area. Although I think Texaco is now Shell? Or maybe Chevron? Anyway, I thought an early 1950s Texaco truck would look nice. Here’s the oil loading dock on the layout:
Looking to the many diecast models in 1:24 and 1:25 showed there were not too many Texaco tank trucks in the era I wanted. About the closest thing was a 1949 truck, but I didn’t like the style. I did like the looks of a 1951 Ford tank truck, but it came decorated for Pennzoil. So I debated on how difficult it would be to repaint the Pennzoil model. I figured it was worth a try and I found one to repaint. Here’s what the Pennzoil truck looks like:
So after looking to prototype trucks like the photos below, I knew the general paint scheme of a Texaco tank truck of the 1950s:
I wanted to strip the original paint off first to get a nice smooth metal surface to paint over. Reading online found that a paint stripper called Aircraft Paint Remover works well for diecast vehicles.
And boy does it. All of the paint came right off down to bare metal. I did not try to strip any of the plastic parts since I’ve had varying degrees of success with removing paint from plastic.
Then came painting. Below is what it looks like now. I still have to brush paint a bit around the side door window, and decals are in the works. But it’s getting there:
