I'm having a little trouble making out the purpose of these hoppers. I want to say this guy is grain based on the long lids on top but I thought I read somewhere the narrow bays on the bottom would indicate plastic pellets. That said, this car doesn't appear to have the tubes to vacuum the pellets out. This car has 6 bays on the bottom. Pot ash or grain? And then there are kits like this where it would seem clear from the bottom this is a plastic pellet car but yet it has the long hoods on the top instead of the circular hatches. I believe this to be a mistake by the assembler when most covered hopper kits came with the choice of either. But please do correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Jason I think the BNSF 403705 is an Accurail car The BN 443054 looks like an Atlas car, Potash or dry chemicals. The DMIR is a bit more difficult as we dont see the entire car, could be Athearn. It would help if you could get the entire car in the image, an image of the bottom of the car will help for identifications as well.
Thanks for the reply. Please allow me to clarify... I know who the manufacturers are (my inventory is well documented) BNSF is indeed Accurail and the cylindrical hopper is Atlas. You have a keen eye. But I was looking to precisely identify the loads the cars carry. I believe the 2 choices are grain or plastic pellets. The cylindrical hopper is probably potash like you say. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The DMIR car has no road number, but I did find a picture of one in the same paint scheme. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsPicture.aspx?id=982531 It isn't the same car as your model -it has the early rib on the side, and it looks shorter. It has the horizontal slide gates on the bottom that grain hoppers have, so yours might just be a stand in model. Athearn was known to do that with their hoppers in the older Blue Box era. The slight variations in different body designs made for expensive tooling, so they were consolidated into generic models to get the most paint schemes out of one car mold. The BNSF car is grain. I found a picture of it in between two other hoppers, one being a BNSF brown car, made famous by the "Earthworm" grain trains. The BN car was not on RR picture archives, but ones with close numbers were. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=BN&rid=443000 I found one that was originally a Great Northern car, then a seaboard car, then BN. I found this picture of another GN 6 bay with GRAIN LOADING on the side. If the class stayed together, which it would be safe to say that it did, it was still in grain service for BN. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3098186 It looks like all 3 are for grain, but if you need to figure out other cars, here are some tips: You could try to find a picture of that road number, or close to it, on a website like railroadpicturearchives.net. A road name may help too. If a chemical or plastic company name is on the side, then that is what is in the car. You don't have anything with a non-railroad name, so that probably won't help. If they are in a long hopper unit train, it is probably grain, especially in the Midwest. Rib sided hoppers like the PS-2 are usually grain service too. Potash is transported unit too, but I think of that as more Canadian. Trough hatches are for grain so they don't have to open hundreds of doors to fill the whole train. Almost all centerflow 4 bay hoppers are for plastic. Since it is relatively light, the car can carry more of it, which allows the builder to make the car longer to get up to the axle weight. 2 bay hoppers (not pictured) can be for sand or cement since it is extremely heavy and dense. Less can be carried in one car, so the cars are short. Piping on the bottoms can be used to suction or blow out (PD: pressure differential hoppers) things that don't flow well, like flour, or for foodservice items that can't be exposed to the air.
