I’ve been in this hobby for almost 50 years now but recently I discovered a type of car I had never heard of before, that being a drop bottom gondola. I discovered this recently when I bought two gondolas on my LHS second hand shelf, one for the NYC and the other for the PRR. It was only after I got them home that I discovered they were drop bottom gondolas, a term I had never come across before. I had to do a Google search to learn how these cars were used and what I read was that these cars carried the same type of cargo as ordinary gondolas but allowed them to be unloaded by dumping the load rather than unloading them manually. If I understand the article I read, some of them dumped the loads outside the rails and others were designed to dump the load between the rails. It seems to me the latter would work the same as open top hopper cars. Would the latter have advantages over the hopper cars. I’m also guessing these cars could be used just like regular gondolas for loads that didn’t require dumping. Also, would these cars ever be unloaded by a rotary dumper?
I have been unable to find any documentation that indicates the NYC or the PRR ever used this type of gondola. If that is the case, I could still use these cars as ordinary gondolas. If they do represent actual NYC or PRR prototypes, I’m thinking they would be a good choice for delivering sand to the sanding tower although it would require some modification to allow for dumping the sand instead of manual unloading.
