Southern Pacific’s H-100-34 class of open top hoppers are a rather enigmatic group of cars, at least to me. According to the link above they were built in 1977. It appears that many of them were destroyed in the Cajon Pass runaway in 1989. I doubt that all of them were. However, I have no record of ever see any of these cars. When SP system hoppers would pick up coke from the local refinery, I would only see DRGW’s 4-bay hoppers. When I checked a few years back there were none listed in the roster. Presumably Southern Pacific sold off the remaining cars, or let the lease expire (assuming the were leased). Does anyone know anything about them?
Eric, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any SP hoppers, other than the aggregate twin hoppers.
(It seems strange that they’d get big triples for aggregate service–the cubic capacity is far too high!)
One hundred fifty cars isn’t a big quantity of hoppers for any railroad. For the record, I show all 150 cars still existing in 1982; the quantity was down to 105 in early 1989, after the wreck (there were 143 left as of mid-1988). Between early 1992 and the end of 1993, the quantity dropped from 105 to 33. It was down to 12 by the end of 1994, and 8 by mid-1996.
I don’t see any evidence of any of these having been rebuilt for Golden West Service. I’d assume natural attrition in most cases, though a bunch may have been sold off in 1992 or 1993 (that’s a fairly common car size, and it would be hard to check on that).
I also thought the aggregate service was a bit odd. I have to wonder if they were bought primarily for petroleum coke and minerals service. They were hauling some type of mineral when they were involved in the Cajon wreck, it seems like it is widely reported at potash but was really something else (I do not remember what it was).
I recall reading that the train was carrying trona.
Carl, thanks for the information. I wonder if SP considered these surplus after RGI bought SP and if DRGW’s equipment was in better shape, so SP decided to get rid of these and replace them with DRGW hoppers.
Actually, I suspect that the replacements were the CTRN 600000-series aluminum hoppers, which carry SP system classes.