The Varney “PRR H23” mentioned above is a twin hopper with a roof, and it represents a car that may have never existed. PRR’s H30’s were not rebuilt from coal hoppers. They were built new. One PRR H21 four bay hopper was converted into the unique covered hopper class H21d number 254250. They also had a small group (for PRR) of over 200 class GLb coal hoppers that were rebuilt into GLe two bay covered hoppers.
In my earlier post, I forgot to mention F&C’s B&O N-34 wagon top covered hopper kit, which represents a car first introduced in the late 1930’s.
B&O was another road that applied hatches and floor openings to USRA single sheath boxcars, turning them into a sort of covered hopper.
I realize most of my suggestions have been kits, but the simple fact is that kits are the only way to get there unless you’re talking about buying brass models, which often require painting, decaling, and usually some tweaking. If you don’t feel up to building these kits, you might want to think about paying somebody to build them for you. You wouldn’t be the first one to do that.
Tom
(edited)
Thankyou for the corrections regarding the H30.
Somewhere I have read that the Varney cars are pretty close in apperance to some converted open top cars but I do not know if that is correct…
MEC had some covered hoppers for cement service with the square hatches that were built around 1915. The ones with the round hatches are Airslides that started coming into service in the early 50s.
Well I bought 5 of the Intermountain in Union Pacific, 1940 on e-bay, almost got the whole set of 6 but got outbid on one, suits me as I only needed 3 to keep the right ratio of cars but the price was right.
When I was building up my roster of HO Pre 1960 RR cars, finding covered hoppers for the early years was quite difficult. I eventually got quite a few, mostly ATSF and IC - but none were RTR.
The most difficult find was the 3 car ATSF set put out by Kato, which I eventually got off Ebay. They are kits too.
I realize that a number of MRs don’t care to build RR car kits, but I would urge you to give it a try. Worst case would be “you could not do it”. Best case would be a RR car you would be especially proud to show off.
In any case, I suggest you make it a routine to search Ebay every few days. It may take awhile, but sooner or later something that works for you will show up.
In fact I restore old wood car kits but even with all my knowlege I find RTR a better option, now that I have these I will be able to unload all my tichy kits of this type. Yes I could build them but would prefer spending time building buildings of which there are few RTR of good quality so I can finish my railroad (at least to the point of not feeling like I have t6o work on it all the time).
Some years ago, I was especially happy to pick up a 3 pack of Kato’s GN covered hoppers. There wasn’t much else out there (as noted in quote). When, more recently, the better detailed Intermountain GN covered hoppers showed up at my house, I was also happy to sell those same Katos. To a guy who was happy to buy them. At a lower price.
The Kato ones barely classify as kits. You don’t even need glue. And they are tough, I had one fall to the cement floor and become a kit again. Once I found all tthe pieces, just put it back together, nothing was actually broken. All that was missing was one knuckle spring in one of the Kadees I put in it.
Well, just a note that I got the cars, they are some of the best I have seen. Was worried at first because I have had issues with metal roof walks before from Intermountain, but these were perfect.
I picked up a bunch of Tichy ones, but they have to be built. We will see if someone dose RTR like intermountain before I build them, they do build other Tichy cars.
Here are the MDC cars which I mentioned earlier. I removed the overly thick cast-on ladders and grabirons, replacing them with ones formed from .012" phosphor-bronze wire…
I also replaced the original round hatches and the roofwalks, using parts from Bowser’s ACF covered hoppers…
…and upgraded the outlet gates, too, again using parts available from Bowser…
While covered hoppers weren’t all that common in the late '30s, they’ve always been among my favourite car-types, so modeller’s licence ensures that they’re very common on my freelanced layout, with almost two dozen in service.
Then depending on the railroad, you can make them the wya the prototype did, for models that actually appeared on the railroad in the 30’s - they took open hoppers and added roofs to them, and changed the discharge gates. The Reading LOa cars were built exactly this way. Accurail has the open hopper, the discharge gates are fairly easy to make with some filing and plastic shapes. The roof is the hard part- I need to play around with a 3D CAD and have the 3D printed. I have 3 of them in progress, using now unavailable Micro Mark roof stock which is perfectly sized and shaped to fir on the Accurail open hoppers - just cut to length. Then the hatches can be build up of squares of styrene plus some brass wire, add some roofwalks, paint and decal. This was done in the 30’s as cement traffic was building and to keep the shop workers busy and at work during the Depression. Other railroads probbaly did similar things. Wholesale adoption of purpose-built covered hoppers didn;t come until much later. Bowser offers their cars decorated for Reading - but they are cars the Reading acquired much later, in the 60’s, even though the original owner got them much earlier.
