Was it the many type of coal hoppers, passenger cars, etc? Futhermore, I already have a mix of PRR hoppers (early and late lettering), numbering about 10, I plan to have the Cornerstone coal mine on my future layout, as well as a power plant, a coal bridge, and a coaling tower. So the question is, what would be a realistic amount of hoppers for a western Pennsylvania set HOscale layout?
Jimmy,
That depends on what year you are talking about. A quick review of a 1959 ORER gives the following rough totals:
66,000 - Box Cars
38,000 - Gondolas
15,000 - Hoppers
2,700 - Flat Cars
531 - Stock Cars
I would have guessed that Hoppers were the king, but it appears that Box Cars of all types hold the record.
Jim
That kind of make sense, as the Pennsy was a general freight hauler over a large area, as opposed to say the Leigh Valley or Leight & NE which were much more coal (anthracite in particular), and even those railroads had lots of general traffic in their heyday.
This really didn’t occur to me till I started looking at images of LCL freight terminals from the 1930s to the 1950s - quite often literally 1000s of boxcars on the sidings. Look at some of the images of NY Harbor car-floating in the day - dozens of car floats at a given pier stations, with maybe 10 cars on each (these were the cool station floats, car floats with a loading dock right down the middle for unloading freight at the pier without pulling the cars off the float), times numerous pier stations around the harbor - could have easily been a 1,000 boxcars (from the images looks like it was almost all boxcars) just floating around the harbor alone (let alone yards and sidings)!
And a lot of those 15,000 hoppers was used in stone and coke service but,still that’s leaves a lot of hoppers for coal use.
Doesn’t say but,I wonder if PRR’s ore jennies are counted as “hoppers”?
Larry,
My 1959 ORER does not list any HMA ore cars for the PRR, something like that could have come later…and my 1951 ORER does not show any short hoppers in the 22’-24’ range as well. Were the PRR ‘jennies’ rotary dumped gondolas?
Jim
It all depends on the area modeled. If yor modeling a coal branch then hoppers will be king. If your modeling the mainline or part of the panhandle then box cars would dominate with passenger trains running the outside mains. Around the industrial areas of say Pittsburgh then some mill gons, flats, and house cars (PRR speak for box car) with coke and coal tossed in too.
Having 10 hoppers is not too many for a road that had over 20 thousand hoppers of one class. I run trains at the club with 80 to 100 hoppers. I still have more house cars than hoppers though.
Pete
Jim,According to Keystone PRR used regular hopper cars until 1960 then the ore jennies…
http://pennsyrr.com/modeling/86-modeling/201-iron-ore-traffic
Other then in model form or in photos I never seen a ore car.
[quote user=“jrbernier”]
Jimmy,
That depends on what year you are talking about. A quick review of a 1959 ORER gives the following rough totals:
66,000 - Box Cars
38,000 - Gondolas
15,000 - Hoppers
2,700 - Flat Cars
531 - Stock Cars
I would have guessed that Hoppers were the king, but it appears that Box Cars of all types hold the record.
Jim
Hello Jim and folks,
Something sounds a little out of whack here. 15,000 hoppers on the Pennsy in the 1959 ? In 1951 they had 39,699 H21 hoppers alone in service. The postwar period rostered over 39,000 GL series cars, though they were decling in numbers through the 1950’s. In 1956 2,000 H35’s came online; in 1957 they took out a 10 year lease on 2,000 H2a’s. In 1958 H39’s were coming on, 16,159 of them, and the H43 class numbered 7,500. I’m sure a lot of these numbers are differerent from different sources, and not all these cars were around at the same time, but here alone there’s close to 110,000 cars. In 1950 Pennsy reported a total ownership of 119,136 “hoppers and gondolas” but doesn’t break it out. You’re showing 38,000 gondolas above; assuming about the same or a few more in 1950 that leaves about 80,000 hoppers in the early 1950’s. I think it’s safe to assume they had more than 15,000 in the late 1950’s.
Take care,
Benny
I’m still working on getting more Bowser kits as we speak. Yes I plan to model a freelanced portion of the PRR on a coal Branch, that also includes what I posted in the original post.
Jimmy,This may help you in some way.
http://www.byz.org/~morven/Railway32/freight/hoppers/index.html
Bad orders.
Charlie
When coal transitioned from mostly bottom dump to mostly rotary dump, the cars used transitioned from hoppers to gons. Note that gons outnumbered hoppers 2:1 in 1959. They weren’t all used for coal, but a lot of them were.
Also, after WWII coal use declined. A lot of coal was replaced by #2 fuel oil when railroads shifted from steam to diesel motive power.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with bottom-dump hoppers)
That was PRR’s true state of affairs…Lots of deferred maintenance.
THANK YOU! That also helped decide on the paint scheme I need to focus on, the “Shadow”.
Mr. Bernier is, indeed, incorrect. In my copy of the January 1959 ORER, there are 92 entries for self-clearing hoppers.
Those entries add up to 55,297.
Ed
Having followed some of your earlier postings, I conclude that you’re modeling the period from about 1945 to about 1955. During that period, most PRR freight cars were “freight car color” red (i. e., NOT tuscan), and they carried the classic ball lettering that had been introduced in the late 1920’s. More modern schemes such as the shadow keystone began to appear about 1954, at the very end of your modeling period. It took quite a while to repaint the entire fleet, so a lot of PRR cars were still carrying the ball herald in the 1960’s. The ball herald is your best bet.
Hoppers for use in large-volume service like power generating stations tended to be of higher capacity, like 70 tons. So shipments to your power plant would most likely be in H21a 4-bay hoppers. The H21’s with clamshells were all gone or nearly all gone by the end ot the 1940’s. H22’s and H22a’s were also gone or nearly gone. Smaller two-bay GLa hoppers were also very common, many of them carrying smaller capacity loads to smaller home-heat coal dealers. Bowser can fill most of your needs for hoppers, and a few interchange cars like a B&O W-2A (Athearn) four-bay 70-tonnerr would look right at home. B&O began to repaint these from the “13 Great States” scheme to the “Big B&O” scheme around 1954.
The very most common PRR boxcar of the day was the X29, and the above comments about lettering schemes apply to these as well. Gs gondolas were still running in staggering numbers.
If I were to build a roster of 12 cars for your specific needs, I would probably make it 4 H21a’s; 3 GLa’s; 3 X29’s; and 2 Gs’. A round roof X31 boxcar and an H30 covered hopper might be nice additions for variety. I’d probably specify the ball keystone scheme for everything. I know you like your Duplexes, and they
One more thing: Boxcars tended to range far from home rails. Hoppers tended to stay fairly close to home. For example, it would be rare (although not unheard of) to find a PRR hopper car on the west coast. So even though PRR may have owned more boxcars, many of those boxcars were far from home rails at any given time, so the numbers that you would see at any given time may be different from the numbers owned. Lots of foreign road boxcars would be present, but few hoppers from the N.P., for example.
Ed,
I rechecked my ‘math’ - This is from an Oct 1959 ORER. I ‘rounded’ my numbers with some quick addition for that original number. After reviewing the ORER and looking for ALL HM & HT self clearing hoppers, I come up with 51,288. For some strange reason, the PRR does not show a ‘recapitulation’ of type H cars - Strange! They do show a ‘move forward’ of ALL type F, G, and H type cars and that total is 64,587. Sorry for not finding the Hoppers buried in the type GB cars a couple of pagers earlier. The bottom line for the OP was what was the most common car on the
PRR - It was a Box Car(over 66,000 examples).
Jim
Something to remember that the “G” series hoppers were actually classified as gondolas, hence G. The H21 has a “H” since it is classified as a hopper. One must be careful when wading through the ORER, since it will give you an inaccurate number based of the Pennsy non standard classifaction system.
That is why I used the term "self-clearing hopper"s, as also used in the ORER. Of the 55,297 of the former, 19,169 were of the G classification, rather than H. Not knowing much about the Pennsy, I thought, at first, that they might be drop-bottom gons. The GN and NP had many of these, so the possibility existed. Then I found pictures. Yup, pretty much your basic hopper car.
Ed