Hello, I’m modeling the transition era (1949-1959); now regarding “Hoppers”, which ones should I use for this time period, 2 bay or 3 bay hoppers?
Thank you
Yes.
2 bay 50-55 ton, 3 bay 70 ton, 3 bay 90 ton, 4 bay 70 ton, 4 bay 90 ton.
a lot depends upon the prototype location you are trying to model. for instance, when i worked on the old Big Four Cairo division 95 percent of out traffic was coal and we could not use anything larger than a 70 ton tripple hopper because of track conditions on our line. track rehab to bring it up to 100 ton car capacity would have been tremendously expensive and the company did not have the money.
it was like a time warp. the mines around Harrisburg Illinois gave us almost 500 loads a day and we were running 160 car trains with 5/7 covered wagons for power. the entire division was one big slow order. you could pull the spikes out with your fingers.
i used to joke about how no one needed a standard watch. just a calendar.
grizlump
It also depends on the road you are modeling, if you are, in fact, modeling a particular road.
PRR had about 90% 4 bay H21, and 9.9% everything else including 2 bay GLa (both offered by bwser) and something like the .01% USRA 2 bay.
I believe the Athearn offset side 4 bay is correct for B&O, but they had a lot of 2 bay as well.
The Stewart 2 bay is real close to an N&W HL or H2 (can’t remember right now).
…and I believe the BLI 3 bay is a C&O.
If anyone knows more, I’d like to hear.
If you are concerned about fidelity, be careful with USRA style twins, as some roads had very few of these, and there may be a better choice for that road. OTOH, on some roads the USRA twin was a majority class.
Hoppers tended NOT to interchange, and there were special rules about returning those that did.
Of course hoppers owned by coalcompanies would be a differen story, But I think they tended to run with the RR that served the mine of the car owner.
There were also early unit train type exchange agreements,such as the PRR handling of N&W< L&N and C&O coal from Kentucky to ports on Lake Erie, other that specific situations like that, you probably wouldn’t see many say, ATSF hoppers pulled by an Eastern road, and not likely a train made up of two or three hoppers from 5 different roads each.
If there was 1 or 2 hoppers in a foriegn road mixed freight, chances are they wouldn’t be far from home rails.
Nope: N&W class H2A (quantity 13,500). Pennsy leased 2000 from N&W. Wabash and B&O leased similar cars from N&W. These are really nice models.
Ed
Hello, thank you everyone for the infos; they are noted in my “little reference book of trains”.