There is a lot that
can be said when it comes to the history of covered hoppers in North American
railroading, I will give you a brief overview to get the ball rolling. A great
book on the topic of covered hoppers and their primary use; grain hauling is in
the book by Jeff Wilson The Model
Railroader’s Guide to Grain from Kalmbach Publishing During the middle of the 20th century freight car
manufactures in North America began developing rail cars with increased load
capacity for shipping. One of the most successful designs was one for hauling
dry goods such as grain, salt, wheat, and flour. This 4750 cubic foot design
from Pullman Standard became a very popular buy for most class I railroads and
a few short lines when new. Now is where it gets interesting for this project
for me, as I was looking through photos of the prototype for these cars it
became apparent that the Northern Pacific never had the 4750 cubic foot
sized cars on their roster because they were offered after the 1970 Burlington Northern merger.
With that said, these cars is are “fudged” cars in the way that they have been
numbered in the correct series but they have numbers that would represent the
slightly smaller capacity of 4427 cubic feet. The spotting difference is the
amount of vertical ribs on the side of the cars, thirteen for the smaller
capacity and eighteen for the 4750 cubic foot design. I can live with this
slight flaw because these are in fact some really nice looking rail cars when
they are completed and weathered, now onto the work put into these two covered hoppers.
These were assembled by following the included instructions
but nearly all of the parts were weathered with Floquil “Weathered Black”
before they were glued together to help with reaching some of the trickier
spots like the ends of the cars. The brake rigging was drilled out to
accommodate air pipes and the lines were custom bend by following prototype
photos. On each of the ends of the cars air hoses from Hitech Details and
Details Associates cut lever bars were installed. Once the cars were fully
assembled, I switched my focus to the trucks and wheels for these cars. I
wanted to do something a little different and I installed 100 ton trucks with
36” wheels from Athearn Genesis, these trucks feature rolling wheel bearings
which look really cool up close. The outer sides of the wheels were painted
with Tamiya paint to similar rust on the wheels. The truck side frames were
then weathered using Tamiya semi-wet powders. The cars were also gloss coted
once completed so that the surface could accept the small decals like
consolidated lube plates, reweight stencils, and ACI tags. Once the decals were
all in their proper places, the cars received a final dull cote spray to finish
the models off. I really like these car kits from Accurail, they make great
inexpensive filler for large unit grain trains and only take about an hour per
car if you do the extra detailing. TRWBM.
