I haven't looked in the ORER yet. But I'm assuming all these cars are hoppers. I'm transcribing a Station Car Record book into Excel and though these entries might be of interest to some.

Train Date Initial Number Contents Consignor Consignee
197 6/13/55 LV 60255 Limestone Ferguson Ia Hallet Const
196 6/14/55 CRR 49869 Limestone Ferguson Ia Hallet Const
196 6/14/55 IC 76247 Limestone Ferguson Ia Hallet Const
196 6/14/55 D&H 3987 Limestone Ferguson Ia Hallet Const
196 6/14/55 IC 8740 2 Limestone Ferguson Ia Hallet Const
196 6/14/55 NYC 860008 Limestone Ferguson Ia Hallet Const
196 6/14/55 Milw 95009 Limestone Ferguson Ia Hallet Const
196 6/22/55 L&A 9144 Limestone Ferguson Ia Hallet Const
197 6/26/55 Milw 83117 Limestone Ferguson Ia Hallet Const



Clark Propst
Mason City Iowa

Hi Clark,

I believe that LV 60255 is a double sheathed wood box car.

Joel Holmes

The NYC car is definitely a hopper

Roger Hinman

Clark Propst wrote, in part:
I haven't looked in the ORER yet. But I'm assuming all these cars are hoppers.
I'm transcribing a Station Car Record book into Excel and though these entries
might be of interest to some.

Train Date Initial Number Contents Consignor Consignee
196 6/14/55 NYC 860008 Limestone Ferguson Ia Hallet Const'

Roger Hinman replied:
"The NYC car is definitely a hopper." 

NYC 860000-860499, Lot 479-H, 30 ft 6 in IL offset hoppers built in 1924. 
Unfortunately, these are not easily modeled in HO, as they represent a different

design than the commonly available AAR Standard 50-ton Offset twin.  These cars
are shorter, have the "short" offset taper, and two distinctive "splice plates":
http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/images/lot-479.jpg

The best stand-in is the old Ulrich offset twin, which has an odd "splice plate"

in the center of the car side.  As these are cast metal kits, removing this
detail isn't the easiest task.  The S scale guys actually have the correct
model:
http://www.showcaseline.com/Hoppers/OffsetHoppers/01117.jpg
Unfortunately, they have the opposite problem - it's offered in schemes more
correct for the AAR Standard 50-ton Offset twin.


Ben Hom

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Benjamin Hom <b.hom@...> wrote:

NYC 860000-860499, Lot 479-H, 30 ft 6 in IL offset hoppers built in 1924. 
Unfortunately, these are not easily modeled in HO, as they represent a different

design than the commonly available AAR Standard 50-ton Offset twin.  These cars
are shorter, have the "short" offset taper, and two distinctive "splice plates":
http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/images/lot-479.jpg

The best stand-in is the old Ulrich offset twin, which has an odd "splice plate"

in the center of the car side.  As these are cast metal kits, removing this
detail isn't the easiest task.  The S scale guys actually have the correct
model:
http://www.showcaseline.com/Hoppers/OffsetHoppers/01117.jpg
Unfortunately, they have the opposite problem - it's offered in schemes more
correct for the AAR Standard 50-ton Offset twin.


Ben Hom

Ben,
Sunshine released a mini-kit for this car at the Lisle meet last week. I opened the instructions, and Sunshine lists the series as 860000-861999 and P&E 3350-3399 in 1953, while noting that this was a later consolidation of the cars in NYC reporting marks. The decal sheet gives options for Lots 479-H, 533-H, 534-H, 535-H, and 539-H.

As far as the mini-kit, it consists of a pair of resin sides and decals for NYC and P&E (pre- and postwar lettering schemes). You are to scrape off the ribs and other side detail from an Accurail USRA twin and glue the new sides onto the hopper, then paint and decal. The model will not have the correct interior offset, but I don't see an easy way around that. I don't know if the sides will match up to a Tichy USRA hopper, which of course has the advantage of separate wire grab irons. Frank Hodina created the masters, which look very nice.

I surmise that the Ulrich car's prototype was the later style NYC offset twins?

Regards,
Bob Heninger
Iowa City, Iowa

According to the Lehigh Valley Modeler web site (http://www.anthraciterailroads.org/lvrrmodeler/boxcars.htm), LV 60255 was a 40 ft wood sheathed box car. Sunshine modeled that car as item number 37.10.

Ed Robinson

Per notes from various sources:

CRR 49869, IC 76247 and 87402, D&H 3987, MILW 95009 hoppers
L&A 9144 50' high side gondola
MILW 83117 I don't know (series 81482-83480 *even* were double-sheathed boxcars, most other 8xxxx were gondolas)

Al Brown, Melbourne, Fla.

While there are several models of hoppers available I personally feel that the current offerings do not truly represent the prototype fleet.Armand Premo

Armand, who is obviously bored and looking to stir up some action on the
STMFC list asks... <G>

While there are several models of hoppers available I personally feel

that the current offerings do not truly represent the >prototype fleet.

Good Golly Armand,

You really want me to ask? Its just that the replies will go on
forever... Ok, I'm a sucker... what are the major holes you see? I
don't have any from my perspective... Here's my analysis for my fleet.

First, the good news is that we all (or almost all) agree that hoppers
were local/regional in distribution, so it really does matter what
railroad you model as to whose cars you need. Those western guys will
be moaning right about now about how irrelevent this thread is because
it really does not matter for them (much).

As a Pennsy modelers, i have nearly every car I could wish for for my
PRR fleet. Yes, I would LOVE it if some were reissued in 21st century
tooling, but that brings its own set of issues, and I'm going to be
heretical and say that as I get older, I find that a good weathering job
can make a car with molded on grabs look pretty darn good...

Going beyond the PRR fleet, I can readily find major cars for most
connecting roads such as B&O, C&O, READING, N&W and a whole slew of
midewestern roads. Add into that some really neat "oddballs" such as
Susquehanna and I'm sitting purty. Without wheel reports to guide me,
I'm going 75% PRR, 25% other, with mutliple cars from the connecting
coal roads and single cars from a slew of others. A box from Toy Train
Heaven arrived just last week with N&W and READING fishbelly and WM
channel side 55 ton 2 bays, and I'm just about to order the decals for
my M&StL USRA hopper and AA and Wabash war emergency cars so I have a
bunch of hopper projects on tap... not to mention the resin needing to
built!

So, from my vantage point, between plastic such as Bowser (and
ex-Stewart), Accurail, Tichy and P2K (and not for me, but Kadee) there
is a nice selection, and then resin fills out many cars with
Westerfields, F&C (cheap!) and Sunshine. These cars are too numerous to
elucidate individually in an email, but I'm sure that many STMFC listers
will be tempted to do so <G>!

Regards
Bruce Smith
Auburn, AL

Bruce,

I guess I'll jump in ... for some railroads like the B&O the one hole is
the lack of a pre-USRA twin hopper.

For the B&O this was their class N-12 a seven side post design with end
sills built over a decade beginning in 1913 and ending in 1923. It is a
significant class as it seems to be the hopper that moved the B&O coal
car fleet from a mixture of gondolas and twin hoppers to a fleet
composed of essentially all twin hoppers. The B&O had over 10,000 of
these hoppers and was the backbone of the fleet until they began
purchasing AAR off-set side hoppers in large quantities after WWII. It
was their "standard twin hopper" and even though they received almost
3,000 hoppers from the USRA, they immediately returned to building the
N-12 after WWI with an additional 5,000 cars built.

To a lesser extent an earlier B&O hopper, the class N-10, a nine side
post design built in 1905 and 1910 is also needed. A good candidate for
a resin model.

I recall you model the early 1940s so you really need some N-12 with
your fleet of foreign road hoppers.

General Arrangement drawings are available at the Pullman Library at the
IRM for both of these hoppers.

Bob Witt

Bruce Smith wrote:

Armand, who is obviously bored and looking to stir up some action on

the

STMFC list asks... <G>

While there are several models of hoppers available I personally feel

that the current offerings do not truly represent the >prototype

fleet.

Good Golly Armand,

You really want me to ask? Its just that the replies will go on
forever... Ok, I'm a sucker... what are the major holes you see? I
don't have any from my perspective... Here's my analysis for my

fleet.

First, the good news is that we all (or almost all) agree that hoppers
were local/regional in distribution, so it really does matter what
railroad you model as to whose cars you need. Those western guys will
be moaning right about now about how irrelevent this thread is because
it really does not matter for them (much).

As a Pennsy modelers, i have nearly every car I could wish for for my
PRR fleet. Yes, I would LOVE it if some were reissued in 21st century
tooling, but that brings its own set of issues, and I'm going to be
heretical and say that as I get older, I find that a good weathering

job

can make a car with molded on grabs look pretty darn good...

Going beyond the PRR fleet, I can readily find major cars for most
connecting roads such as B&O, C&O, READING, N&W and a whole slew of
midewestern roads. Add into that some really neat "oddballs" such as
Susquehanna and I'm sitting purty. Without wheel reports to guide me,
I'm going 75% PRR, 25% other, with mutliple cars from the connecting
coal roads and single cars from a slew of others. A box from Toy Train
Heaven arrived just last week with N&W and READING fishbelly and WM
channel side 55 ton 2 bays, and I'm just about to order the decals for
my M&StL USRA hopper and AA and Wabash war emergency cars so I have a
bunch of hopper projects on tap... not to mention the resin needing to
built!

So, from my vantage point, between plastic such as Bowser (and
ex-Stewart), Accurail, Tichy and P2K (and not for me, but Kadee) there
is a nice selection, and then resin fills out many cars with
Westerfields, F&C (cheap!) and Sunshine. These cars are too numerous

to

elucidate individually in an email, but I'm sure that many STMFC

listers

will be tempted to do so <G>!

Regards
Bruce Smith
Auburn, AL

Bob Witt wrote:

I guess I'll jump in ... for some railroads like the B&O the one hole is
the lack of a pre-USRA twin hopper.

<SNIP>

I recall you model the early 1940s so you really need some N-12 with
your fleet of foreign road hoppers.

General Arrangement drawings are available at the Pullman Library at the
IRM for both of these hoppers.

Bob,

I guess I was actually trying to suggest that STMFCers not all jump in with their wish lists <G> since hoppers don't have nationwide interest.

However, since you've contributed one somewhat notable gap, I'll make the suggestion that you contact Steve Funaro. F&C has lately been fantastic for PRR open top cars, with another on the way ;^) I know Steve is looking for subjects and the N-12 might be just the thing (I'm trying to get together enough information to get him to do a common READING hopper too).

Hey, and while you're at it, why don't you see about getting someone to do a Duryea underframe for a variety of hoppers? I'm still trying to figure out how to "fix" my P2K war emergency B&O cars.

Modeling foreign coal hoppers does bring up some interesting questions. During WWII, full trains of B&O, WM and N&W origin coal came up the Cumberland Valley to Enola and thence east. As far as I can tell most of these were the closest thing at the time to "unit trains" and were solid consists of originating road cars. Neither wanting to build complete trains of hoppers from these foreign roads, nor having the operating capacity to handle them (on my planned layout), I've condensed them into blocks of foreign cars.

Another issue we discussed earlier this year was the impression that C&O cars never left home rails and how wrong that really is. I was reminded by the recent publication of the new PRR book on Columbus (PRRT&HS, Rick Tipton) that the C&O routinely interchanged full trains of coal for great lakes ports with the PRR at Columbus and this traffic accounted for a reasonable percentage of C&O's total coal traffic at one time. This makes 2 points, first, that C&O cars did travel offline, and second, what you model depends entirely on where you model. Most PRR modelers don't need that much in the way of N&W or C&O cars, but if you model Columbus, its a completely different situation.

Regards
Bruce

Bruce F. Smith
Auburn, AL
https://www5.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/

"Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."
__
/ &#92;
__<+--+>________________&#92;__/___ ________________________________
|- ______/ O O &#92;_______ -| | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ |
| / 4999 PENNSYLVANIA 4999 &#92; | ||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||
|/_____________________________&#92;|_|________________________________|
| O--O &#92;0 0 0 0/ O--O | 0-0-0 0-0-0

Bruce Smith wrote:

Another issue we discussed earlier this year was the impression that C&O cars never left home rails and how wrong that really is. I was reminded by the recent publication of the new PRR book on Columbus (PRRT&HS, Rick Tipton) that the C&O routinely interchanged full trains of coal for great lakes ports with the PRR at Columbus and this traffic accounted for a reasonable percentage of C&O's total coal traffic at one time.

That this single "unit train" operation was a significant fraction of all C&O traffic sounds to me like the exception that proves the rule: not a lot of C&O hoppers went off line--EXCEPT the lake coal via Columbus.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

Bruce Smith wrote:

Another issue we discussed earlier this year was the impression that
C&O cars never left home rails and how wrong that really is. I was
reminded by the recent publication of the new PRR book on Columbus
(PRRT&HS, Rick Tipton) that the C&O routinely interchanged full
trains of coal for great lakes ports with the PRR at Columbus and
this traffic accounted for a reasonable percentage of C&O's total
coal traffic at one time.

On Oct 31, 2011, at 1:04 PM, Anthony Thompson wrote:

That this single "unit train" operation was a significant
fraction of all C&O traffic sounds to me like the exception that
proves the rule: not a lot of C&O hoppers went off line--EXCEPT the
lake coal via Columbus.

Absolutely (but that wasn't the original "rule" <G>). I'll add the somewhat obvious comment that, because these were handled as complete trains, there was little opportunity for individual cars to get diverted and mixed into the general population, although it did happen from time to time.

Regards
Bruce

Bruce F. Smith
Auburn, AL
https://www5.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/

"Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."
__
/ &#92;
__<+--+>________________&#92;__/___ ________________________________
|- ______/ O O &#92;_______ -| | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ |
| / 4999 PENNSYLVANIA 4999 &#92; | ||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||
|/_____________________________&#92;|_|________________________________|
| O--O &#92;0 0 0 0/ O--O | 0-0-0 0-0-0

Bruce Smith wrote:
“Another issue we discussed earlier this year was the impression that  C&O cars
never left home rails and how wrong that really is. I was reminded by the recent
publication of the new PRR book on Columbus (PRRT&HS, Rick Tipton) that the C&O
routinely interchanged full  trains of coal for great lakes ports with the PRR
at Columbus and  this traffic accounted for a reasonable percentage of C&O's
total coal traffic at one time.”


Tony Thompson replied:
“That this single "unit train" operation was a significant  fraction of all C&O
traffic sounds to me like the exception that  proves the rule: not a lot of C&O
hoppers went off line--EXCEPT the lake coal via Columbus.”
 
I’ve got to agree with Tony on this one.  All we’ve done with this example is to
disprove an absolute – that C&O hoppers never left home rails.  Of overarching
importance is the second point that Bruce made in his previous post: what you
model depends entirely on where you model.
 
Really, the obvious question is “so what?”  If you model the Cumberland Valley
or the route that the lake coal took via Columbus, this data is spot on.  For
the rest of us, it’s irrelevant.  Case in point: I’ve been taking a hard look at
the hopper fleet of the NEB&W using the data from the logs and shifting lists
from the Premo collection.  Out of 1267 data records for hoppers, only three
were C&O hoppers.  Granted, this data and what we are trying to represent on the
NEB&W are not exact analogs, but this, combined with the paucity of N&W (5), VGN
(3), and Clinchfield (3) cars seems to support that the SCO directing return of
empty hoppers to these railroads vice “stealing” them for other loads was being
followed and that these roads are currently over-represented in our model fleet.
 
So, as Warren Zevon would say, “Ha’ina ‘ia mai ana ka puana.”  Turns out that
we’ve acquired a large number of C&O cars over the years that we’ll now have to
downsize.  Additionally, the data also shows that B&O cars were on the opposite
end of the scale (276 of 1267),  so we’ve got some B&O hoppers to build,
including Duryea underframes and more than a few N-12 and N-10 subclasses. 
Guess this is some delayed revenge of sorts by the B&O for the C&O takeover.
 
 
Ben Hom

This prompts a question in my mind and that is was there a limited number
of railroads who delivered heating coal to coal dealers? In other words
would I be more apt to see a N&W or B&O hopper at my local coal dealer in
say Sanford NC or Richmond VA? Or would I have seen the local railroad,
assuming they had hoppers, be the deliverer of that product? Sanford NC
should either be SAL or A&Y(Southern), direct or from a NS(old) hand
off or perhaps even A&W or ACL up from Fayetteville. I realize
the industry serving railroad would deliver the car to the coal dealer. Or
would I see a Reading or NYC hopper down here delivering home heating
coal? What prompted this question was the fact that this weekend I found
out that in the mid-1950's the Durham and Southern RR largest product
category , by car load was coal and it apparently picked up from the N&W in
Durham and delivered to the SAL near Aberdeen. I was very surprised. I
don't know much about the car routing and delivery of certain products so I
would welcome opinions from anyone who does.
Fenton Wells

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 2:28 PM, Bruce Smith <smithbf@auburn.edu> wrote:

**

Bruce Smith wrote:

Another issue we discussed earlier this year was the impression that
C&O cars never left home rails and how wrong that really is. I was
reminded by the recent publication of the new PRR book on Columbus
(PRRT&HS, Rick Tipton) that the C&O routinely interchanged full
trains of coal for great lakes ports with the PRR at Columbus and
this traffic accounted for a reasonable percentage of C&O's total
coal traffic at one time.

On Oct 31, 2011, at 1:04 PM, Anthony Thompson wrote:

That this single "unit train" operation was a significant
fraction of all C&O traffic sounds to me like the exception that
proves the rule: not a lot of C&O hoppers went off line--EXCEPT the
lake coal via Columbus.

Absolutely (but that wasn't the original "rule" <G>). I'll add the
somewhat obvious comment that, because these were handled as complete
trains, there was little opportunity for individual cars to get diverted
and mixed into the general population, although it did happen from time to
time.

Regards
Bruce

Bruce F. Smith
Auburn, AL
https://www5.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/

"Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."
__
/ &#92;
__<+--+>________________&#92;__/___ ________________________________
|- ______/ O O &#92;_______ -| | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ |
| / 4999 PENNSYLVANIA 4999 &#92; | ||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||
|/_____________________________&#92;|_|________________________________|
| O--O &#92;0 0 0 0/ O--O | 0-0-0 0-0-0

--
Fenton Wells
3047 Creek Run
Sanford NC 27332
919-499-5545
srrfan1401@gmail.com

Clark, looking at the documents you transcribed into the spreadsheet, I see
one error in your question. The LV car was hauling lumber to Hoover Lumber,
not limestone to Hallet Construction. Which explains why the car is a boxcar
and not a hopper or gon. You will want to make that correction in your
spreadsheet.



Doug Harding

www.iowacentralrr.org

It would not be unusual to see both C&O and N&W hopper cars in the same coal yard in Cleveland during home heating season.  They did have brokers.

 

A lot of Bob Photo's 1950s C&O freight car images come from Charlotte(sp?) , NC.

 

Al Kresse

Romeo, Michigan

Al Kresse wrote:

It would not be unusual to see both C&O and N&W hopper cars in the same coal yard in Cleveland during home heating season. They did have brokers.

Al makes a vital point. I was acquainted with a fellow member of the Pittsburgh club when I lived there, and his uncle had worked for a coal broker. He said they would be checking coal prices at mines all the time and looking for the best deal on the grade of coal they sold for domestic use. This means that in some areas, a range of railroad- owned hoppers could be delivered, in other areas one and only one (because transportation cost mattered too). Strikes could change all this, but I believe it's unwise to model exceptions.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

You guys haven't looked at my spread sheet.

Dallas Center Station Records 1953-54-55
Train 197 Date 11/20/54 Initials C&O number 134201 series 129000-135499 Type HM lading Coal from Philco W Va to Farmers Coop Dallas Center returned 11/24/54 Train 196 empty from Dallas Center to Peoria Ill.

Did this guy have friends running around the Upper Midwest?

Clark Propst

Thanks Doug. That's on the sheet I didn't have the 'forwarded' info on. I must have missed an car entry. If that's the only screwup I'll be surprised!
Clark Propst