I was thinking it might look good to have some ballast hoppers or gondolas on a siding on our HO Santa Fe layout. The layout time period is set in 1957.
I’m trying to figure out what class of cars the Santa Fe used for ballast service at this time.
My guess is the Caswell gondolas were used, but this is just a guess.
If you know an appropriate model in HO scale, what are your suggestions?
Here’s what I’ve thought about;
The Intermountain Caswells would be a good choice I’m thinking. Pretty much anything Intermountain gets my vote nowadays as their assembled models and kits are nicely detailed with no molded on grab irons.
I’ve also seen the Atlas 2 bay model, which I think is a pretty good rendition of a Santa Fe GA-54 car. I’d think this class could be used for ballast service. But I also think these models have lots of molded on details, which just means more time and money to make them look good. I’ve been slowly purging our layout of dated models with newer more detailed ones, and I don’t think this Atlas model qualifies as a highly detailed model.