Happy New Year! A new class of hoppers has graduated from the workbench onto the layout–here’s the hopper class of January 2025! Work on this group commenced with the completion of the Gin Creek Branch and the realization I didn’t have enough weathered hoppers to complete an operating session. This group increases my number of “mainline hoppers” (70 and 100T cars) by about 40%. All these cars are factory painted, but most sport new numbers made by a combination of scraping off unwanted numbers (or portions of numbers… some of the “4s” became “1s” this way) and circular “Os” in the “SOUTHERN” and adding new numbers with K4 decal sets. Many of the Southern hoppers in the more modern lettering started as 74100 class Atlas Trainman cars with heap shields–these cars are too long to accurately represent the ex-Central of Georgia cars of this class, but they’re really close to the 70300-73749 class and have the more accurate squarish “O”. These had their heap shields removed, grabs narrowed, and details added such as tow loops, homemade coupler cut bars, homemade trainline hoses, and etched metal brake platforms.
Speaking of ex-CofGa hoppers, I picked up one of Athearn’s newer-release triple hoppers painted in CofGa. This car has pretty accurate dimensions, and it has been upgraded with wire grabs, metal wheels, and more weight. It’s still got some of the chunky MDC detail (e.g., huge rivets), but it is a good improvement. I added some heap shields from the scraps I cut from the Trainman cars to get this essential detail. The remaining two Southern hoppers are some Tangent models I picked up on eBay. Both were factory numbered for the CNO&TP class 281300-281599, but the Southern had an identical class of cars numbered 73750-73949, so I renumbered one.
The Interstate hopper represents a class of second-hand cars purchased in 1956 from the Berwind-White Mining Company to ease the Interstate’s car shortages. It’s very similar to a Pennsylvania RR GLa hopper, so I modified a factory-painted Bowser GLa hopper with wire grabs and some of the distinctive GLa interior braces made from bits of styrene. On my layout, this car is serving out its very last years in “yellow ball” captive service between tipples and the Westmoreland Coal transloader in Appalachia, VA. Rounding out the class is a single L&N car, a factory painted Walthers Trainline PS3 hopper that got new ladders and heap shields.
All these cars got a decent bit of weathering including drybrushed rust chips, airbrushed tan grime/fading and flat black, a flat black wash, and multiple layers of rust washes in the interior. Unlike previous classes where I’ve built cars to represent different portions of the eras I’m modeling, these cars were purpose built and weathered to represent the late ’60s, the era I’m starting with. Looking forward to employing these cars on a mine run soon!
