I may have been a bit overzealous today while at the LHS and purchased some rolling stock that post-dates my 1950’s era freelanced road. I picked up 5 undecorated 100 ton, 3 bay hopper cars for use in my coal operations. These are the 12 rib version.
I can’t find info on build dates for these cars. I’ve found info from various roads and most of them were built in the 1960’s and later, which is no good for me. Can anyone tell me how far back this style of AAR HT class goes?
Perhaps someone out there knows of an exception, but my understanding is that 100-ton hopper cars weren’t produced in any numbers until the 1960s.
(Note – HT means any open top, self-clearing car having fixed sides and ends and bottom consisting of three or more divided hoppers with doors hinged crosswise of car and dumping between rails, regardless of the car’s capacity.)
In the 1953 Car Builders’ Cyclopedia, there are no 100 ton hoppers. There are external post triples–they’re 70 ton and have 10 ribs. I was thinking you could kinda fudge on this, but I would think that 100 ton cars would have 10/7 th of the volume of 70 ton cars–they’d be taller and/or longer.
There were some really huge coal gons and hoppers going all the way back to around WW I but I seem to recall they were not used in interchange. One resource I found on the internet
suggests that AAR rules in 1963 approved four axle 100 ton cars for interchange. So yes I think you have cars outside your era here, unless you want, if challenged by know it alls, to engage in an elaborate “story” that these are experimental cars not permitted in interchange.
Ed (above) mentions the 1953 Car Builder’s Cyclopedia. These Cycs can be invaluable resources and it pays to really gets a sense for proper era of cars before getting all starry eyed at the LHS.
My era is 1965-69. and I have Car Builder Cycs from 1970 (to show the outward limit for the newest cars), 1966 (for more or less average new cars) and one from the 1930s to show what would likely be among the oldest cars still running in the 60s. There were surprising changes between 1966 and 1970!
While that nicely establishes the outer limits, I really should get one from the 1950s for what would be typical cars, on the assumption that most freight cars are between 10 and 20 years old. The various locomotive, car, track, and MOW Cycs are not cheap – I have paid over $100 – although from time to time I have gotten deals at swap meets if I am willing to tolerate damaged covers and other things that diminish the value to book collectors. Cheapest one I ever got was $9.
Another good resource, and often very very cheap at swap meets of railroadiana, is old copies of Railway Age and other industry (a
Thanks for the help and info everyone. I returned the cars to my LHS today. We looked through their supplier for some 33’ 2-bay MTL undecorated cars, but unfortunately, couldn’t find any.
Looks like I’ll be going through an online source for my coal trains.