Covered hoppers-What were they used for?

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

I have two Athearn ACF covered hoppers that look like this:

I want to run them on my layout, but I want to know what industry they were used for!

Also, can someone guide me on how to weather them?

Thanks!

~Justin

2

Well I cannot swear as to how the Chessie/B&O used their center flo covered hoppers, but going back well into the 1960s an industry in my old home town got plastic pellets (about the size of aspirin and somewhat translucent and waxy looking) in this kind of covered hopper, and made clear plastic trash and lawn bags out of them.

The unloading facility was across the street from the plant itself. Flexible hoses connected to the outllets below the car. I assume a vacuum of some sort was used to unload the pellets and send them by underground hoses to the storage tanks at the plant

Just about any commodity that is granular or loose and needs to be kept perfectly dry is a candidate for shipping in covered hoppers – grandulated plastic, grain, paint pigments, dry chemicals, etc. Heavier products such as sand, talc, salt, and kaolin clay use the shorter cars.

There are probably exceptions to this but it seems the long trough like hatches up above are common for grain while other products tend to use round or square hatches, not long troughs. I have not built one of those Athearn cars in a long time and i cannot recall if both kinds of hatches came in the kit.

Except for cars that handle products such as kaolin clay that cause their own kind of mess on teh side of the car, most center flow cars seem to age fairly normally – the paint gets flat and dull, slight rust streaks on the weld marks down the sides of the cars

http://www.morscher.com/category_thumb.mv?showcat+Imagess

, sometimes the sides are scratched or even slightly dented (tough to do with plastic!) and in general just show the effects of age and rain and road grime. These days the graffiti artists have usually done their vandalism too of course.

Most of the special weat

3

I am not aware of Athearn making models of three bay Center-flow Hoppers. That is probably an Accurail model. With the types of discharge gates that it has, and the fact that it is a railroad owned car, it would probably haul grains, minerals, or fertilizers.

I did see a UP switch job pull four cars like this (3 UP, 1 SSW) from a refinery on Saturday. I wonder if they were hauling calcined petroleum coke or brought in a catalyst.

4

I didn’t even notice that! Doh! [B)] (But it is a pretty common trick to modify the bottom of the Athearn car to create the three bay version.)

Dave Nelson

5

Heh-Yeah, I made a mistake. It was Accurail, but I had Athearn on the brain. Thanks for the information so far, too.

~Justin

6

Here in the NW, Grain would be a common commodity handled in a car like that(Portland, OR is the largest grain exporting port in the country). Flour and sugar among other food products would also need to be protected from the weather, and would be handled in a covered hopper.

A two bay covered hopper would be used for heavier bulk commodities needing protection from the weather, in NE Oregon, near the town (speck on the map [swg]) of Lime, is a Cement plant that ships cement in covered hoppers. ( CEMENT and CONCRETE are not the same thing, cement is a component of concrete)

Doug

7

They would carry grain, fertilizer, potash or soda ash.

Dave H.

8

There used to be a factory between Pottsville and Minersville PA that received glass in covered hoppers. The glass was shipped as rather crude clear marbles approximately 1 inch in diameter.