For the “Q” modelers here, I’m looking to to use some Accurail hoppers that look close to these cars: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=78712. For my era, they would be used as sugar beet cars headed to the Billings sugar plant. I am in need of the following:
Any additional pictures of these cars that are not on the major photo sites
The correct decal set(s) to match the lettering as shown.
The right detail part to fix missing brake wheel details (they were freebies so I’m not complaining).
And probably the hardest one, making sugar beet loads for the cars.
As usual, thank you for any assistance that can be provided.
When Athearn brought out their two-pocket hoppers way back in the 60s-70s, the line-up contained externally ribbed, “offset side” and a composite sided car similar to that in the photograph. Life-Like introduced a kit for composite sided, war (World War II) emergency cars as well as an example of a car rebuilt with steel replacing the wood, as part of their Proto 2000 line, in the 1980-90s.
Kadee makes some excellent replacement brakewheels of many types. Check their website.
I have seen photos of CB&Q two bay hoppers, probably war emergency, serving a small power plant on Milwaukee’s south side, into the mid and late 1960s, and they still had their wood sides, not replaced with sheet steel. (Now that is not the same as saying that wood had not been replaced, perhaps many times). This really surprised me as I assumed that by then the cars would have been retired, or converted to all steel, or reassigned to other duty, but no: they were still haulin’ coal.
The November 2008 issue of RMC has a detailed article on the sugar beet industry, and suggests the use of Anise seeds to represent the sugar beets. I bought a fair-size bag of them from the local Bulk Barn, as sugar beets were also grown here in Ontario.
The RMC article also shows some beet loaders, too, and they’re good enough to enable you to scratchbuild one, if needed.
I’ll be using drop-bottom gondolas, with removeable side- and end-panels to increase the cars’ capacity, like these Intermountain cars…
…and these, too…
I’ll be modelling only one loading site, so the processing plant will be located “elsewhere”, as most of those sites were massive.
Anybody got a good idea where I might locate a copy of either the article or the magazine itself? My usual source doesn’t show anything. I know the company that published that particular issue of RMC is no more. I don’t even know the info on the company that IMS picked up the name. I doubt they would have access to the back issues, but I could be wrong.
An alternative I have seen for sugar beets is using fenugreek seeds.
What I actually need is the entire wheel and housing similar to Detail Associates 6401. Unfortunately, I need two of them and my statndard source only shows one.
In doing some further research, I have found that Cal-Scale 351 actually has the right brake to match the prototype pictures that I have. There are 6 of them per package and I hav 4 cars needing the detail.
