Okay, here’s a question for all the prototype experts. What is the prototype for the Athearn (and others) offset side quad hopper? I seem to have quite a few, yet I know nothing about them.
I would like to know what real roads had them, when they were built, and roughly how many were built. Also, how many (if any) of these are still in service.
I have tried searching for some of this information and have come up with nothing, hopefully you guys can also point out what I’m not doing right in my searches. I’ve been using MSN and typing whatever I’m looking for (like “offset side quad hopper”), but I always get some huge number of sites, mostly un-related. I try to vary what I type in, but it never gives what I want! Help!!
Thanks in advance, Morpar
According to the NEB&W website, it’s one of the relatively few Athearn cars that HAS a prototype:
(snip)
[quote]
QUOTE:
Athearn’s kits represent some of the oldest still in production, with standards and accuracy for a more tolerant era, along with some of the state-of-the-art newest kits under their Genesis line. The new owners have concentrated on modern cars, and yet also have brought the hobby to new standards with their steam locos, yet the freight cars from the steam era surely must represent an embarrassment to the company. (Steam era freight car enthusiasts often use the term “Athearn” like an insult.)
Their hoppers are represent the best of their steam-era freight cars, although they have more wrong schemes than right ones for each kit. It appears the new owners interested in doing new schemes, hopefully more accurate, but seem content to still crank out the wrong ones.
Quad Hoppers
140-1749 40 Foot Quad Hopper - Based on the late ‘20’s ARA standard design. Within a few years, the way the offset ran out at the ends was changed, and one set of hoppers eliminated to essentially make the prototype of the Stewart triple.
In 1949, 40 foot quads and triples made up a quarter of all the hoppers, and hoppers, in turn, made up a quarter of all freight cars.
The Athearn quad represents 12,537 cars.
By comparison, the Bowser/Westerfield H21 quad represents 39,369, mostly Pennsy, just over a 1,000 lettered for the B&O.
The Westerfield USRA triple (mostly C&O and NYC) represent 17,848 cars.
The Stewart triple represents a sizeable fleet, but I don’t have a total. They might represent as much as 40,000 cars, but on the other hand, a lot of these were built in the early '50’s, so their full impact would not be felt in '49.
But you can see that you would need three Bowser cars and 1-1/2 Westerfield cars for every Athearn quad to balance the roster. (Modeling a specific region and road would drastically change this ratio. Thi
Thanks for the heads-up and the leg work. I didn’t realise that there would be such a disparity on the prototype make-up. Guess I’ll need to start buying more of some other cars now!
I’ll also have to start trying Google from now on. I get tired of doing nowhere searches!
Thanks again.
By the way that’s extremely poor practice to plagarize the NEB&W website.
Dave H.
It’s not plagarizing, since I properly credited them. I also “pitched” the website by giving them free advertising, something that I do here on a regular basis. I was also careful to not clip the entire section out; if someone wants to know more, they can go to the site and pay for a month’s membership. I’ve also been a paying member of the site since BEFORE paying was mandatory.
I’m a member of the NEB&W, are you?
Morpar,
I’ve found “Dogpile” www.dogpile.com to be good.
Also, if you put “+” between the words on some sites it only looks for all of them together.
So try “offset+side+quad+hopper” and see what happens.
We had a lot of similar coal hoppers in Australia, but they were triple bay cars. They were built by Talbot in Germany in about 1950-51. (But that won’t help you much). Some of them were converted to covered hoppers and are still in grain service.
Peter
I just tried my above advice on google and found
http://members.tripod.com/appalachian_railroad/hopperhistory.html
Peter
it’s to bad, now that athearns run by horizon,and their genisis line does correct prototype models, they would paint their older bb models in correct schemes
Actually, they’re starting to. I’ve worked with Athearn with one of their newer Roundhouse RTR releases, and they made sure to only pick roads and paint schemes that were (mostly) appropriate for the car they were releasing. The model in question was only about 75% right (the ends were wrong), but it was a whole lot better than the Athearn of old.
Thry’re trying, and welcome input if anyone sees something wrong, and has CONSTRUCTIVE input on how to fix the problem.
Prototype: 1926 ARA quad hopper phase 1