All 12 hoppers from the “class of Jan 24” including 9 Atlas 70T, 1 Atlas 50T offset, and 2 Proto 50T war emergency rebuilds
I’m proud to introduce you to the hopper class of January 2024. This class is comprised wholly of “run of the mill” hoppers for the layout rather than any super-detailing projects. Most are Atlas hoppers including 9 70T 9-panel hoppers and a single 50T offset. Rounding out the class are two Proto 2000 war emergency rebuilds. All hoppers are factory painted, but most have been renumbered, and some have had their round “O” replaced with the rectangular one more appropriate for my era. Renumbering/relettering consisted of carefully scraping off the unwanted digits with an X-Acto chisel blade and adding new decals. I used a tiny paintbrush on the ends to paint in something close enough to the right number to not stand out from a distance.
The underside of an Atlas hopper shows the additional details including door bars, train line, grabs, brake platform, and coupler cut bar
The Atlas cars all went through a series of “upgrades” including shaving the backs of the grabs to make them more round and closer to prototypical thickness–this is far easier than replacing all the grabs with wire, and from 12″ away, you really don’t notice that a few of the grabs are still molded onto the body. I did replace all the grabs adjacent to the coupler with wire grabs, and I added homemade coupler cut bars from .012″ brass wire and train lines out of copper from old Cat 5 ethernet cables. Each car also got tack boards made from strip styrene. Since I first posted about the “layout standard hopper” four years ago, I’ve added a couple more details including an etched metal brake platform cut from a sheet of roof-walk material and the bars across adjoining doors, made from styrene channel. The Central of Georgia car also got some slope sheet braces made from styrene L shape. I touched up the metal and bare plastic with some black and Vallejo “hull red”–not an exact match, but close enough once the weathering goes on. I used a silver Sharpie to add a little detail to the elbow and ends of the train lines.
The interior rust is a couple layers of rust-colored wash
I had a lot of fun weathering these. Each first got a coat of matte lacquer spray to help blend in the decals and to give the cars a nice finish for the weathering to stick to. Next, I dry brushed some black, light rust, and dark rust onto the sides of the older black cars to simulate fading paint, scrapes, and rust patches. Some of the red cars also got a few nicks of dark rust. I masked off the capacity data and shop dates of a couple of the cars to keep it new looking like a patch job. I airbrushed all the cars with a light coat of dark tan on the sides and underframe and some flat black inside the hopper. I sprayed the black thinly letting the red still show through a bit. The undersides got a little black as well to add to the grime. Next I gave each a wash or two of flat black to bring out some of the detail and add some grunge. The last step was the hopper interior rust. I made a wash of light rust color, painted a “water line” just below the top chord where the coal would reach, and filled in everything below with the wash. I sopped up any excess with a paper towel. Each car got 2-4 coats leaving some more rusty than others. A few of the older cars (like the black ones) got some extra dabbing of light rust on the insides and a little dry brushed dark rust for some variety.
The CofGa hopper got the most weathering of the bunch
Overall I’m happy with how these turned out, and I like this technique for weathering the inside of older hoppers. While newer hoppers tend to have lighter rust or even bare shiny metal, an older steel hopper tends to settle into a mottled dark rust color which I think the repeated light rust washes over flat black airbrushing accomplish pretty simply and convincingly.
Here’s an Atlas hopper before touch-up painting and weathering showing the additional details and “grab shaving”
The hoppers all got medium weathering and old rusty interiors suitable for their represented age
70T hoper 281260, assigned to the CNO&TP, shows off its dark rusty interior
The only 70T hopper in older roman lettering is 281056–renumbered to fit into a CNO&TP series of these cars
The “oldest” hoppers in the group are a pair of war emergency rebuilds still in original black and a “heritage hopper” Central of Georgia hopper in original colors
A few of the cars with some coal loads showing the heaps straight from the tipple
Side-by-side of an MDC car (left) and Atlas car (right) showing the slight length difference
In the last post, I mentioned some of the work that went into creating an ex-Central of Georgia 70T rib-side hopper from an old MDC Roundhouse kit. Atlas makes a much more crisp and better operating out-of-the-box car in its Trainman 9-panel, 70T hopper that is a good stand-in for this car, but it’s about 2 scale feet too long. The Atlas kit, however, is a great model for the Southern’s mainstay fleet of 70T hoppers in the 70300-73749 and 281000-281299 series which far outnumbered the ex-CofGa cars in the 74100-74584 series–all you have to do is remove the heap shields and renumber them. The MDC Roundhouse kit can be picked up in Southern paint pretty cheaply. It’s a far WORSE model both dimensionally and detail-wise to match the Southern’s main fleet of 70T cars, but its overall dimensions are closer to the ex-CofGa cars. However, it requires a ton of work to make the car presentable in a string of more recently produced and more detailed cars. So, is it worth the work? Spoiler alert: it’s not worth it unless you’re just a crazy hopper person like me who notices the subtle length difference between these different series of cars in a long string of hoppers.
Ok, if you’re still reading, here’s a little more on what it takes to model one of the ex-CofGa cars using an MDC Roundhouse kit or one of the slightly improved Athearn versions. First, what’s wrong with the model out of the box? These molds are at least 40 years old, so the detail is sub-par–the rivets are clunky, the grabs are thickly molded, the brake platform and brake wheel housing is grossly under-modeled, the brake wheel is horrendous, and it’s just missing some details like the long grabs on the left ends of the car and bracing inside the car. Also, the bottom sills and corner posts are super thick at the ends. The interiors have an ugly scar right in the middle where the injection molding was done. The most egregious issue is also the most likely to escape notice (so I didn’t bother fixing it): the middle hopper bay is reversed with respect to the brake end. The lettering is not up to today’s standards but acceptable for a car that will be weathered, but there is no lettering on the ends of the MDC cars. The car also comes with arched heap shields that can be added, but they’re a little too short to look right, something that I initially ignored but eventually remedied by replacing them with parts off an Atlas car. It’s also missing details that were on the CofGa cars like slope sheet bracing on the ends.
Detail differences between the original model (right) and the modified model–note the difference in the side sill width
I remedied most of these issues with an X-Acto blade. I started by removing the angles between the bottom sills and the side panels. Next I worked on the side/bottom sills and carved away excess material from the top and bottom with a No 11 X-Acto blade (leaving essentially just enough for the “PULL HERE” lettering). This was done to both the ends of the sides and the ends. I also removed the excess material from the left-side corner posts with a blade (I left the ladder side alone) and cleaned up the excess plastic in the steps. I narrowed down the ladder grabs with the X-Acto blade using repeated small cuts on the back side and alternating between top and bottom until the grabs were essentially round-ish instead of rectangular. I also used a chisel blade to remove the awkward rib down the center of the underside of the slope sheets. Finally, I removed the molded-on grabs from the lower ends adjacent to the couplers.
Details added include tack boards, grab wires, tow rings, cut bars, and train line
Next came the added styrene bits. I added some flat bits for the tack boards and the panels where the coupler cut bar would attach. Some large triangles (using the Atlas cars as a model) became the interior bracing. The most complex part was the slope-sheet bracing under the ends. I made these from three pieces of L-girder styrene and just dimensioned and cut them to resemble photos. I also replaced the brake wheels with more detailed Miner wheels from the parts bin (one Kadee and another whose origin is lost). I added wire grabs adjacent to the couplers, and added custom-bent long grabs on the left ends made from .012″ brass wire and tow loops made by bending .012″ brass wire around a thumbtack (I bend them into a “J” shape and just drill one hole). I bent coupler cut bars and eye bolts from .012″ brass wire using a little jig I made. I also added a couple pieces of brake-gear piping between the reservoir and triple valve bent from .020″ brass wire. The train line is a piece of copper wire from an old ethernet cable sandwiched between two pieces of L-shaped styrene. The final details included Kadee No 5 couplers, Intermountain metal 33″ semi-scale wheels (faces, backs and axles painted black), and arched heap shields salvaged from Atlas models (the in-progress photos here show the MDC arches which I replaced before weathering). Some careful carving and putty fixed the ugly scar on the center sill inside the car.
Detail differences on the ends
I wanted to renumber the cars and detail them for the early ’70s, so I removed a couple of the numbers and the black-and-white lube stencils the best I could by scraping them off with the back of an X-Acto chisel blade. I custom-mixed some paint to match the body and covered all the new details and scraped sides. I added the new numbers, ACI labels, and end reporting marks using a combination of Microscale, Herald King, and K4 decals. Now they were ready for weathering!
Interior detail including braces and covering up the injection mold scar
For weathering, I started with some drybrushing of dark rust spots in a few places on the sides. Next I airbrushed them moderately using a combination of flat black and dark tan airbrushing and washes. Since these are old cars that have been repainted, I went a little heavier than usual with the black on the interiors. I hit them with a wash of flat black paint and water, letting it sit for a minute and then wiping it off vertically to produce some rain streaking and shadows on the details. I used a wash of light orange rust and water on the interior and then added some drybrushed rust spots inside.
String of Atlas and MDC cars mixed in–the differences are subtle but noticeable
In all, these cars took probably 4x as long to detail and make layout-worthy as the Atlas Trainman cars. Now that they’re complete, I do like seeing the more stocky look of these CofGa cars mixed into a long string of Southern-heritage 70T cars. So much so that I’ll probably eventually go back and take all the heap shields off my Atlas cars and renumber them into non-CofGa series. Thankfully I’ve only completed 3 of these Atlas models, so it’s not a huge sacrifice. So, if you’re a hopper nut like me and nerd out on seeing the subtle differences between car series, then knock yourself out on a project like this! If you’re not a hopper nut, I recommend sticking to the Atlas models and saving yourself a lot of trouble.
