Big John Hoppers

[chessie]

I saw a NS hopper car today that obviously had been repainted into NS, however, it still had the words "BIG JOHN" on the side. So how many of these exist and what are their sources????

Harold

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Harold Hodnett
Fan of NS, CSX, and their predecessors!
Now Open! The North Carolina Railfan Web Site
http://www.trainweb.org/ncrail/

[Mankind]

Not sure how many are left, but they're former Southern cars.

Paul #3

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http://www.trainboard.com/smiles/042.gif
Have A Nice Day!

[Justin May]

Harold,
Best question to date for SOU fans and Covered hopper nuts like myself. Well what you say could have been one of two hoppers, the first now NS 269065-269498 which are classed HCS-22. These hoppers have 12 trough hatches, 8 discharge gates and a cubic capacity of 4948. The car is 61'11" in length and has a total capacity of 206200 lbs. These are repaints and slight rebuilds of the origianl SOU order 8575-8999. Originally built by Magor Rail car division of Fruehauf (yes the trailer people smile.gif ) The SOU order was also 61'11" in length and had an enlarged capacity of 5325 cu. ft. totalling 200000 lbs. These hoppers stayed in SOU colors for some time until NS rebuilt the entire fleet for increased unloading efficency- termed the Pegasus Project, which in partnership with ADM and Staley, helped reduce unloading times and guareenteed 50 car unit trains to the grain producers mentioned above. The project entailed creating a system of allowing both discharge gates to be opened at the same time by the use a splicer. This reduced unload times and has been completed on 250 cars as of 1994. Well hope this gives you some insight on these great BIG cars and as always have a good one, Justin May

http://smrf.railfan.net/SMRF/Research/SOU_Brochure/Big_John_1.jpg

http://smrf.railfan.net/SMRF/Research/SOU_Brochure/Alum_Hop_1.jpg

[ 04 February 2001: Message edited by: Justin May ]

[chessie]

Justin,
Thanks for the info. It appears the car # is 269242, class HCS-22. I will get a picture posted tomorrow. I remember photographing these in their Southern livery.

Harold

[chessie]

O.K.... here it is:
http://www.trainweb.org/ncrail/images/NS269242.jpg

Harold

[CP&E 3207]

Overland <ade these for HO scale in Brass for a little while, not sure if they still produce 'em or not :confused: .--pat

[Justin May]

Nice picure Harold smile.gif I look forward to seeing more on your website. Justin May

[ 06 February 2001: Message edited by: Justin May ]

[chessie]

The website has been a slooow process... especially since the server does not support all FP2000 extensions. :mad: Oh well, it won't win any web designs, but it will get my pictures out to folks who can enjoy them! The digital ones are much easier to post, mostly involve just resizing the original images.... the color prints are much more time consuming, and I have well over a 1000 of them :eek: I have a goal to get some each week, and so far I am able to do so smile.gif

Harold

P.S. I do take requests.... It gives me more incentive ;)

[ 06 February 2001: Message edited by: chessie ]