Recently I bought this Athearn Ready to Roll C&O black hopper. It is my favorite piece of rolling stock now (freight I mean), and I would like at least 10 more of these cars. However, on a search on the internet, the same number keeps coming up, 53237. I have seen videos of many c&o hoppers stringed together but I can’t make out if they are different numbers in the blurry video. Are there any other numbers of this type? If not, would running a string of hoppers with the same number be prototypical? I would guess not, but I’ve seen serious modelers on youtube do it. Can someone clarify this?
Accurail has a 6 pack of HO C&O hoppers with different numbers plus a single car with yet another number. They’re “shake the box” kits i.e. easy to put together. Athearn also has a readay to run 6 pack of B&O hoppers depending on your time frame.
Point ot prototype accuracy - not sure what era you model, but that’s a composite hopper, built during WWII with a steel frame but wood sides to conserve steel. Most railroads that had those rebuilt them as all steel but the early 50’s - wood just can’t take the punishment but if the frames were good they didn’t want to scrap the entire car. In fact many of those were specifically designed so that the wood could be replaced with metal relatively easily.
Athearn also made a 6-pack of those, if it’s like their usual then all 6 will have different numbers, and be different from the single. Dunno if they made Blue Box kits of that particular car, if they did there are probably more numbers available. They also have made a couple of 6 packs of a standard steel offset 2-bay hopper, so that’s 12 more cars with unique numbers - RTR. The steel offset hoppers I’m pretty sure they offered as Blue Box kits for C&O. ALl of this is listed as sold out but you should be able to easily find them on eBay. Every time I think I have all the different numbers offered on factory painted ones for Reading I find a new set. Blue Box kits take minutes to assemble - just buy a can of cheap flat black spray paint at WalMart and paint the weights first. Kadee ‘whisker’ couplers drop right in to the kits and come out at the correct height, and if you want metal wheels, Proto 2000 metal wheels fit the Athearn sideframes. That’s how I built all of mine, I have probably 15 Athearns for Reading and a dozen B&O.
Each car should have a unique number. Even if you aren’t doing prototypical operations, hopefully you maintain some sort of inventory of what stuff you own. It’s easier to track if everything has a unique number. If all the various ones produced don’t make enough cars for you, then you buy duplicates and use decals to change the numbers.
I have photos taken at Milwaukee’s Lakeside Power Plant in the mid to late 1960s of a string of CB&Q composite hoppers where the sides were still of wood, and looked in pretty decent shape. (Not necessarily the original WWII era wood, but wood). So the era for these wood sided cars extended beyond 30 years, although it is true that the cars were intended to have the wood be replaced with steel when possible.
As to the numbers, try exploring the various dry transfer sheets of numbers and letters that Woodland Scenics offers. It is often possbile to have an exact or very very close match with the size and font of lettering on a freight car, just blank out (or carefully remove) a number and dry transfer on a new number (maybe the last number, maybe the second to last). I find this easier and more convincing looking than just decaling. If I were to decal I think I’d do the entire number over again to avoid haing it look odd.
It pays to do a bit of prototypical research, however, such as having an equipment register. Some railroads (the C&NW was an example) would sometimes use only even or odd numbers for a given series of car.&
I always order a sheet of Microscale decals and renumber any duplicate numbers because I use a car card system and each car has to be a unique number for the system to work.
I usually use poly scale decal and paint remover and with a q-tip, rub over the numbers only until they disappear. (too much polyscale decal and paint remover will start taking off the paint if left on the model too long, so remove the decal only then wash the model with warm soapy water.) I’ll then renumber the model with the microscale decals and them spray a light coat of dulcoat on the model to cover any seams left behind on the decals.
A lot of the prototype cars had renumbers done to them or were painted over when the old numbers faded or where grafittied beyond recognition. Try different techniques when renumbering models like remove the old decal, then tape off around where an old number was located with masking tape to form a rectangle, paint in a black or white box and then decal in the numbers within the box. There is a lot of rolling stock out there that were renumbered using this technique…chuck
Ditto on the need for unique car numbers when using car cards and waybills - or when using true-to-life switch lists. Unfortunately, Microscale decals don’t include katakana characters.
Good ideas there, for North American modelers. The one key thing is, there shouldn’t be any duplicate numbers in the same cut of cars.
That said, I have deliberately put the same car numbers on duplicate coal hoppers. One unit train is empty, one is loaded - and when the empties vanish under the tipple, the loads that come out have the same numbers. Not only that - the cars have different numbers on opposite sides! Due to the geometry of the loads/empties route the opposite side of the train is visible on every second appearance. It wasn’t originally planned that way - it just happened.
All 1500 some cars on my roster have unique numbers, otherwise, the operating session would bog down 5 minutes after we started. If you aren’t using car cards, or switch lists, etc. then you don’t have a problem, otherwise better to be planning rather than lazy.
