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Re: NKP hoppers

Garth Groff <ggg9y@...>
 

Ed and friends,

It is beyond our time period, but when I first moved to Virginia in 1982, NKP triple hoppers were very common in N&W trains. I photographed several, and saw many more. They were in generally deplorable condition, often with "straw doors" blocking large holes in the sheathing. Often they had very little lettering left, and it sometimes looked like what was there had been applied by a drunk using a large paint brush. By contrast, there were still a lot of Virginia cars around, and they seemed to be in excellent condition. The N&W cars were all in good shape too.

In deference to Mike Brock, let me point out that all these NKP and VGN cars, plus many of the N&W ones I saw, were steam-era survivors.

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff

ed_mines wrote:

--- In STMFC@..., "George" <gsc3@...> wrote:

I remember running upon a NKP hopper in southwest Virginia on a N&W branch back in the nineteen seventies. This was following the merger of the two roads.
There are a lot of photos including an NKP composite hopper on the CNJ in a CNJ steam - color photo book.

Captions in a NKP publicity photo book said that most coal on the NKP was moved in C&O hoppers. My assumption was that the NKPs own hoppers were used to ship company coal. (The book's captions have been criticized in this forum before).

Maybe the NKP leased or sold some of their hoppers when diesels took over.

Ed Mines



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