Oil tank cars - JOT vs. JOT?

[Ken Ford]

I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos of EH200s in the wild on the Shinonoi Line and notice green tank cars are the norm, but sometimes you will see a blue or possibly a black tank mixed in.  From looking at Hobby Search I see the green tanks are Japan Oil Transportation and the blue ones are Japan Oil Terminals.  Are these the same company?

 

Is mixing oil tanks common, or would I do better to stick with one type?  My focus is on what would be seen on the Shinonoi.

[Ken Ford]

I answered part of my own question courtesy of Kato:

 

Tank Car TAKI 1000 made its debut in 1993 as a successor of TAKI 43000. TAKI 1000 belongs now to two firms' date=' Japan Oil Terminal and Japan Oil Transport, and runs as high-speed tank car on Main Lines. Depending on the company it belongs to, it is painted differently. [/quote']

 

http://www.katomodels.com/product/nmi/ho_taki1000_e.shtml

 

I'm still curious if I'm OK mixing cars from the two companies or if these are normally run in unit trains for one company.

[Densha]

What I have seen in the few Youtube videos I've seen is only the green ones, but even in very short trains like about 5 cars, so even if you don't have enough space it's still prototypical.

[KenS]

This photo could just show both kinds being switched in the same yard, but the way they're intermixed suggests they ran in the same train:

 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jrf_shiohama-station.jpg

 

I'd have expected trains to be all one or the other, since most freights in Japan today are running from a terminal to an industry (or industry to industry) and are often organized for one shipper or one recipient.

 

That's not true of container trains, which run from container terminal to container terminal (in addition to the above) with mixed loads of containers for different shippers.  I'd not have expected oil trains to work like that, and instead being to/from a single company terminal, but perhaps they are.

[bikkuri bahn]

One thing to be careful is that color is not an indicator of ownership- the same oil company may have different color tank cars.  Better to check the logos and lettering.

[Ken Ford]

That's a good point.  The logos appear to be very similar between the two companies, I'll have to go back and check.

 

Does the color of the tank signify anything about the lading?