I am working on my first layout, and a not sure which types of hoppers would be most appropriate for late steam era eastern coal. 100 tonners? USRA? Thanks in advance. I just procured a Proto 2000 Mallet, and it needs something to do:)
A Mallet is a late teens to 1920’s era built engine.
Late steam era would be mostly 50-55 ton twin hoppers and 70 ton quads and triples. Offset side hoppers were very popular, Pretty much any of the cars that met those capacities would be appropriate. True USRA twins would be getting a little long in the tooth.
… some of which ran through the end of steam. Also, like locomotives, a lot of rolling stock ran for several decades before being retired. It is more important to avoid anachronisms like arch bar trucks in the 1950s, and prototypes constructed after the period modeled.
Mark
And…all of the hoppers would most likely belong to your railroad.
Unit coal trains involving many different road names were not trypical. To paraphrase the presenter on Coal Mining at the Philly/NJ Division meet this morning, ‘You don’t see an Alaska Central or a National De Mexico hopper mixed with hoppers from different roads.’ It just didn’t happen with unit coal trains.
Only after mergers might you start to see the mixing of hoppers from the predecessor roads. i.e. the Virginian on the N&W.
However on mixed or thru freights, cuts of several hoppers from different roads are prototypical. For instance if your railroad delivers loads of anthracite not originating from any mines in your road’s jurisdiction.
Also…loads in one direction and empties in another.
HTH & Happy Railroading!
Mark W.
Anthracite Railroads Historical Society links to five classic coal railroad websites…
Never say never. There are lots of pictures of Reading coal trains with other road’s cars in them. Just a quick check of Don Ball’s Pennsy in the 40-50’s book shows non-Pennsy hoppers in mines and in trains (can’t make out the initials but there is a string of 20+ offset hoppers in a train, and the Pennsy only owned 1 offset car).
True…which I why I said, “…most likely…,” in my original post. That was certainly not meant as an absolute! [;)]
Occasionally some hoppers other than the home roads can get mixed in & I’m sure it happened many times.
I agree with your description from Ball’s Pennsy book and offer a further instance where the Pennsy bought up alot of coal from VA through Hagerstown MD, on the N&W and switched power to the PRR. Both road’s hoppers were used for that particular situation. How they were configured in the respective consists is subject to speculation.
However, I don’t think the original poster was asking that complicated of a question. I believe he just wants to model a ‘Mallet, many coal hopper cars & caboose’ train from a mine (I presume) to a yard (or industry). The circumstances of the mining op and the particular railroad would all play a part IF the original poster had actually asked that.
I was only giving some help based on other tendencies (including my own) to buy one of every eastern US hopper and call that a ‘prototypical’ coal train. The advice I offered was reinforced by comments I heard (& saw) in a good clinic given at our regional NMRA meet today which I thought would be helpful to the original poster.
Just a friendly thought! [:)]
Happy Railroading,
Mark W.
I agree that a dog’s breakfast of cars isn’t prototypical. I also agree that the real answer to his question really depends on what road he is modeling. If he is modeling a B&O prototype or related area, then he needs lots of offset hoppers (either the offset twin or the Stewart offset triple). If he is modeling a PRR conection road then he needs dozens of Bowser H21’s. If he is modeling a RDG connection road then he needs a mix of Stewert fishbelly, offset and rib side cars.
Another reason to join the historical societies of your favorite railroads.
Mark
I ran into a similar situation when making up a coal train for my steam-era railroad based on the Rio Grande. I couldn’t find any Rio Grande hopper cars dating any further back than the mid-1950’s (my railroad is set in the WWII era) and was getting very frustrated, until I found out that most of the Rio Grande Utah coal was hauled in bottom-dump gondolas. Luckily, one manufacturer was producing such gondolas, so my coal train problem was solved. Any hopper cars in one of those trains was generally ‘off-road,’ usually C&S or Mopac or UP. So when I run my coal train, it just happens to have very few hopper cars in it.
Weird, but evidently true.
Tom [:)]
Good point, many of the western roads used GS gons (ATSF used the Caswell variation of the GS gon) instead of hoppers.
Wow…I’m not quite sure where to begin.
Sorry Mark, you’re almost 100% wrong here. You’re using 2000’s railroading as a starting point to think about how steam era railroading worked, and you’re getting almost everything mixed up.
Then the presenter is lying to you.
First: “unit trains” did not exist. They were against FEDERAL LAW. Each car had to be billed, routed, and otherwise handled as a single entity.
Second: there were tens of thousands more coal end users before 1960 than there are today. How many small-town heating coal dealerships are there today as opposed to say 1940? Individual cars moved everywhere in the country, and it was nowhere near uncommon for multiple cars to move together “just because”. We’re talking about 2.1 million different freight cars in the 1950s, each moving 50,000+ miles per year, on a national rail route with 40 more Class One railroads than there are today, serving thousands more individual customers. Wanna try to make bold blanket statements about traffic?
Next: true, railroads PREFERRED to keep their cars at home to use as they wished, but once you put a carful of Pennsylvanian Anthracite on an N&W twin hopper headed for California, all bets were off as to when you’d ever see that car again.
Next: ever hear of car leasing? Want to see a jumble of NYC, IC, Wabash and C&IM twin hoppers? Look in central Illinois in 1955. Want to see IC and L&N hoppers in long strings together? Look at Chicago. Want to see 100 hoppers from 35 different r
Not just the West: the Illinois Central and most southeastern and southwestern roads also ran large numbers of GS gons for hauling minerals.
And don’t forget that until the early 1950s, coal mines were being built with one loading track having higher clearances than the others…for loose coal loading into BOXCARS.
I would like to point out that, contrary to an earlier assertion that Mallets were made in the 20’s and 30’s, Mallets were made continuously until the very last mainline standard gauge engine erected in continental USA was placed on the rails in Roanoke. That was none other than Y6b 2200. The year was 1952.
The “modern” form of the articulated locomotive (rear drivers fixed, forward drivers on a flexible frame) was the Mallet type, which was built starting in the early 20th century. They were compound engines, meaning that steam was used twice. First in the high-pressure cylinders of the rear drivers, and then in the larger, low-pressure cylinders forward. (Compound steam was popular around the turn of the century: most compound locomotives were conventional two-cylinder locomotives with for instance, a small steam cylinder on one side and a larger one on the other driving the wheels. Multiple use of steam was very common too during this time in Maritime applications.) Generally, the performance compromises did not make up for more efficient use of steam in railroad applications. Many compound locomotives (both conventional and articulated) were “simplified” (steam used only once, all steam cylinders of the same diameter.) For instance, SP simplified almost all compound locomotives by 1930, although it did purchase two used Mallet-type compound locomotives during the busy WWII years. Mallet locomotives tended to be relegated to helper-locomotive status where higher speeds were less relevant compared to raw tractive effort.
Mark