These seem to be in vogue in the model railroad world in HO Scale: Accurail, InterMountain, Athearn…Del Grosso’s recent BNSF freight car guide does not appear to list any. What happened to the BN/BNSF fleet of these cars?
I see the cars full of grain headed for Pacific Coast ports regularly through Montana and Idaho. Many are freshly painted brown with the BNSF ball and cross logo. I have not seen any with the wedgie logo yet but it looks like they are around to stay.
I can’t vouch for which cars the modelmakers are reproducing or what the latest edition of DelGrosso’s guide says; I’m familiar with neither. But BNSF still has plenty of 4600-cubic-foot and 4650-cubic-foot ACF Center Flow cars out there (those would have three compartments). BNSF has most of them numbered in the low 420000s, and a few for sugar service in the 402000 and 403000 series.
BNSF has gone for higher-capacity covered hoppers in a big way (particularly the 5161-cubic-foot Trinity cars), so it may not be long before the Center Flows become superfluous.
I thought Athearn Genesis and/or LBF Company produced these cars?
They do make models of the Trinity Rail Group cars. The original question was regarding the ACF Center-flow hoppers, hence the reference to Accurail and Intermountain. I think Athearn’s model is of an early plastic pellet hopper.
Thanks for the info. The more I buy these freight car guides, the more I realize that old freight cars never die…and they don’t even fade away. To give Del Grosso his due, his book is titled “Volume One” so perhaps there will be a Volume Two out there to add to the record.
Ah, BNSF4ever, you have a lot to learn!
Old freight cars do die eventually. I could tell you of a day when the typical box car was only 40 feet long, had friction bearing trucks, and a capacity of only 50 tons–or less. Why, some even had sides made of wood!
Since you’re interested in covered hoppers, those were impressive even in the earlier days whereof I speak. Seventy tons capacity, and a volume sometimes approaching 3000 cubic feet (most of them were closer to 2000). They were used mostly for cement and sand. The idea of hauling grain in them didn’t occur until a little later.
A lot of equipment that made it to BN from premerger railroads is gone–insulated box cars, ice reefers. Santa Fe had a big fleet of mechanical reefers once, reporting marks SFRC. Try and find 'em!
Can you find a BN hi-cube box car (let alone one lettered BNSF?) Maybe, if you’re lucky.
There was a whole type of box cars for appliance service, built in the mid-1960s. 40 feet long, with high roofs. Except for SP’s fleet (and I’m not sure they’re related), none of them are in existence any more. None! And Athearn used to make models of them.
Seen any tank cars with domes lately? Any under 40 feet long?
How about drop-bottom gons? The wartime emergency gons, with truss-style outside bracing that once covered wood siding (later replaced by steel on most of them)? Hoppers? Same thing.
All of this stuff was around after the BN was created. But no more.
Not something unlike these cars, right? I often see them on autorack trains being used to separate cuts of racks.
Chris, picture something that high, but shorter in length (that GTW car is a 50-footer, I think), and something that wasn’t rebuilt from a car less tall.
Here is a link to SP’s and SSW’s B-70-36. Below is a photograph of one of SSW’s cars.
Yep–and some other railroads had double-sheathed (smooth sides) cars of this type. I know the CB&Q was one of them; CNW was another.
Carl, did any of those SFRC reefers make it to the BNSF merger? I do seem to recall seeing some SFLC, ex-FGE, reefers a few years back, however I do not recall ever seeing any SFRC cars in person.
I do see some tank cars that have lengths in the vicinity 30 feet, GATX 300600 series and ECDX 900 series. However, they are few and far between. I do not think I have ever seen a tank car with an expansion dome.
No, the SFRC cars were gone before the merger. A small number of them went to the San Luis Central, but they had hundreds–and I don’t know of more than a few that were subsequently operated by someone else.
Can’t find anything shorter than 44’7" in the GATX 300600 series. The ECDX cars range from 38’4 to 40’8" overall.
I should have checked my records before my first post. It should have been in the GATX 300400-300452, excluding 300404, 300405, 300417, 300419, and 300439. BNSF lists the length as 36’-1" while GATX lists them as 33’-5", they must be measuring to different parts of the cars. Those ECDX cars look shorter than they really are.
A couple of years ago, I saw large quanitities of SLC reefers out here, none before and none since.
Take a look at this tankcar. My source tells me it is 31’-9" long.
My source agrees with that. Built by General American. And there are still quite a few of them left (My source is the BNSF site).
Texaco used to be a real fan of those short tank cars, in the 70s.
It looks like BNSF has repainted some older 2 bay covered hoppers with the new logo, which might mean these hoppers won’t be leaving the inventory anytime soon.
Here is another short tankcar
I… actually… LIKE… those BNSF hoppers! Wouldn’t mind seeing one of those in a train!
About a year ago, I spotted a little tiny short tank car in a train in Milwaukee, labeled something about “anti-knocking gasoline additives”. I’d hafta really dig through my pictures to find it, but I’ll post a link if I run across it. Had a dome and all!
Oh yeah… something to keep in mind is that Athearn was the only company making “modern” covered hoppers for quite some time. Their offerings were the PS that had ribs, or the ACF that was round-sided. While Athearn apparently gave up on producing new roadnames for quite a long time for these cars, other companies like Bev-Bel, Accurate Finishing (which gave rise to Accurail), and even Walthers had 'em painted up for just about any railroad possible. Never mind that the prototype was an 18-rib PS2CD-4750 or a 13-rib PS2CD-4427 or even a car manufactured by a different company, that paint scheme went on Athearn’s 16-rib PS2CD-4740 (which was actually kinda rare in the prototype world). Same thing with the 4-bay ACF (5250?), all sorts of paint schemes that belonged on ACF 4600s and 4650s and even cylindrical hoppers ended up on Athearn’s ACF body!
This practice hasn’t entirely ended, though there is a lot more variety in freight cars available…