Car manufacturer of the KCS Hoppers?

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Who is the car manufacturer of the Kansas City Southern Hoppers painted in their new color scheme?

Are those Trinity 5161’s?

http://www.kcsouthern.com/KCS%20Pictures/C4L6427-1.jpg

Regards,

Swafford

2

Can’t answer the specifics as to cars origin/manufacturer of the Cars…

I want to comment on the photo linked. That is a heck of a picture!

Thanks for sharing it here. I really liked it and the contrast of the snow, and the train make the photo in my opinoion. I’d like want to save it for a desk top back ground;

I really like the "Belle’ paint scheme in the sno, Thanks, again! [tup][tup]

3

Agree - and I probably wouldn’t have bothered looking at it without Sam’s comment . . . Althoug, it might have had more impact and illustrated the cars better if the photographer had waited until the train was more ot the left in the frame = less of an oblique angle on the cars.

  • Paul North.
4

Railcar Photos lists 286918 as a Gunderson 5188.

http://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=40832

5

Here’s a link to an extensive list of photos of lots of the KCS covered hoppers. Many of the captions don’t state the builder, and most are too fuzzy when enlarged - at least on my computer screen and to my tired old eyes - to be able to read that info off the stencils, but you’re welcome to try for yourself.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=KCS&cid=4

The “Southern Belle” paint scheme seems to be on at least those cars with numbers in the range from 286xxx - 287343.

  • Paul North.
6

I remember reading, in Trains( I think), that KCS has 2 complete 125 car sets of these grain hoppers, all new equipment delivered about a year ago.

They also have quite a few coil cars in the same paint, makes a really nice looking train, we have had a few of their grain trains in here at the PTRA, always an eye catching train.

7

All of the cars through 286734 at Railcarphotos.com have the American Railcar Industries logo on them. The cars in the 286900 series do not have the ARI logo.

KCS 287090 has a Gunderson logo.

It looks like KCS 286000-286799 were built by ARI and KCS 286800-287699 (my guess) were built by Gunderson.

8

The correct limits for the ARI-built cars are KCS 286000-286749, and for the Gunderson cars they’re 286750-287659. I haven’t looked through this photo collection yet, but I’m led to believe that some groups of cars from each builder are plain gray, rather than fully dolled up.

9

Somewhere between 287343 and 287401 they switch to plain gray. The gray ones appear to have had previous reporting marks and numbers.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsPicture.aspx?&cid=4&road=KCS&NumCols=2&Page=17

10

What may not be obvious is that ericsp’s link above is to the results of a search that yielded 58 photos over 3 pages of all of the KCS covered hoppers at that site, if you want to look at them quickly.

I did that too and tried to post it before, but somehow it got lost in cyberspace. Thanks eric for doing that and successfully posting it.

While these sites are great, this inquiry led me realize that rather than more broadside photos of other cars in the same series, more useful information could be obtained and shared by taking and posting several ‘detail’ photos of the stencil data, logo, trucks, brake gear, hoppers, etc. to the extent permitted by the site conditions and train situation.

  • Paul North.
11

Have the gray Hoppers been painted in the Southern Belle scheme now?