Everyone,
I just got a P2k N&W War Emergency hopper kit and noticed a majority of the lettering, except for the reporting marks, has been painted out. I did a search on line to see if that was was prototypical and found Walthers put out something similar but con not find a prototype example. Did N&W really do what is represented by the model?
Dave H
[#welcome] to the Model Railroader Forums, Dave!
I have one of those N&W cars, but with the steel sides (my layout is pre-WWII, but some of those cars were originally built with steel sides, pre-war).
The lettering on it is very sparse, with N&W plus the car number in very small lettering. It does, however, have the capacities (CAPY, LD. LMT., etc, and cubic capacity), but no built date and no re-weigh info either. I’ll have to add those - I never really noticed that they were missing until I checked the car before responding to your query.
Is the car new, or did you buy it from a private seller? Does it look like the data has been removed or painted-over?
Or perhaps it’s the result of a manufacturing oversight: LifeLike Canada produced some quite nicely-done versions of the Dominion/Fowler boxcars, but forgot to add dimensional data to the first run. They later offered replacement body shells, free if you returned the original bodies to the place of purchase.
I couldn’t afford the original r-t-r cars, but picked-up over a dozen of the returned shells, mostly at two bucks apiece. I re-lettered most of them, and replaced all of the original free-standing plastic grabirons with custom-bent wire ones…
You may be able to find decal or dry transfer lettering to add the necessary stenciling, as I’d guess it to be rather unprototypical as-is.
This is an older N&W HP-class hopper, from Westerfield, showing pretty-much what would be stencilled on an N&W hopper…
Wayne
Dave, your question raised some of my own and, after consulting “Norfolk and Western Coal Cars, from 1881 to 1998” by Andrew Dow, TLC Publishing, N&W did not have war emergency composite twin hoppers as modeled by Life Like/Walthers, either with wood sides or, steel replacement sides. They did have composite triple hoppers of 70 ton capacity in class H4, numbered 30000-30999. After the war, they were rebuilt with steel sides replacing the wood. From what I understand, the car you have was based on a Chesapeake and Ohio car from their 53000-55999 series, built in 1943-1944. These cars were rebuilt with steel at C&Os Raceland shops during 1953-1954. If you wish to keep the car N&W, Shellscale makes (made?) a set with the appropriate lettering although you migh have to cobble the dimensional data from other manufacturers’ sets. C&O Roman style decals are available from Microscale.
Hi, Dave and [#welcome]
In your search did you come across the N&W Historical Society?
http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=19821
They have some paint and lettering diagrams available on their site for the H4 hopper. Only N&W and Missouri Pacific had the 70 ton variety.
http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=20813
I didn’t see any specific explanation for painting out the N&W lettering other than to surmise that there were many War time precautions taken to help suppress any information about material and supply movements by rail.
http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=34146
Another possibility is that some of these cars may have been “leased” or otherwise remanded to the authority of the U.S.R.A. during the War perhaps that is the reason for the “blackout”.
The Proto model was offered as the rebuilt steel sided variety. Is this what you have? The wood sheathing was replaced with steel within a few years after the War.
50ton_proto by Edmund, on Flickr
I’d be interested in knowing more. I’ll post here if I discover anything.
Regards, Ed
Yup that is what I have. I went to search for a photo as well. Can I to assume it was a secrecy thing due to the war? Makes for a great conversation piece with visitors!
Thanks to all for the assistance.
Regards,
Dave
Ed, the car that I have is similar to the one you show, but it doesn’t have the painted-over area nor the re-weigh and re-pack data, nor the BLT. date.
I don’t model Norfolk & Western, and wasn’t overly concerned that it might not be prototypical, as I got it, “used”, at a very good price. On my late '30s era layout, it’s a pre-war car, originally built with steel sides.
The original design was, if I recall correctly, for a car which could be built using either wood or steel sides, as the buyer preferred. When WWII started, or rather when the U.S. joined in, and new hoppers were needed to move all the coal needed for the increased wartime production, a return to the original’s wood-sided option offered a savings in steel that could be re–directed into the war effort.
After the war, many of those cars were re-done with steel sides: while steel rusts quite quickly in the acidic presence of coal, it still lasts a lot longer than wood.
Wayne
Hello. I happened on this post and although its older I’d like to take a moment to hopefully lend some assistance in case someone is still curious about what the prototype for the P2k N&W War Emergency hopper could be. And I apologize if this was answered already. It repesents N&W class H-48. N&W aquired these when they took over the operations of the Wabash. I’ve seen at least one photo dated 1967 of one such car (still in Wabash paint) in an N&W coal train. Whether any actually were relettered for the N&W I can’t say but I’ve never seen such a photo. But possibly it’d make sense that it wouldn’t get the full markings since it was simply a patch job. Besides I can’t see the full set of markings fitting on the sides of those particular cars. I hope this can be helpful.