Which N scale hoppers would be appropriate for the mid to late 1970's? I want to add operations to an unmodeled power plant on my layout. Thanks. J
Well, kinda depends on what you want/need to run. You could go with Atlas 3-bays, Trainworx quad hoppers (4-bay), Athearn/MDC Thrall Gon. All three of those were in use from the late 60's to present day.
I have several of the Intermountain cylindrical hoppers. They have very nice detail for N scale including photo-etched catwalks. I believe these are based on a Canadian prototype but they were definitely seen in the 70s. Don
The IM cylindrical hoppers are nice, but a Power Plant would suggest a need for open top hoppers for coal. Not sure about the era but IM does make those Canadian bathtub gons though, great if you're doing CP or something freelanced. Also, Red Caboose makes/made 5-bay ortners. The ortners are are a long car though, somewhere around the 60' mark but still a nice coal hopper.
In the 1970s some 2 bay hoppers were still in service. Any of the 70 ton 3 bay hoppers made by Athearn/MDC would also be in service in large numbers. Same for the hoppers currently offered by Bluford. The 100 ton hoppers offered by MTL and Atlas (Atlas calls them "90 ton") were abundant on some roads (N&W started building this design in 1963). If you are modelling a specific location or railroad that would be useful to know. Mark
A mix of different types of hoppers would look nice. Even unit trains weren't always uniform back then.
Thanks for all the help. I'll be modeling North Texas in the late 1970's. I've been able to find lots of pictures of BN coal trains coming out of Colorado in the late 70's early 80's, but unfortunately identifying freight cars isn't my forte.
"Probably" a pretty safe bet with the Roundhouse/MDC/Athearn unit train coal cars. That's what I used to model my ATSF York Canyon unit coal train for the 1972 era. I've got some pretty good shots of BN unit coal trains in the Alliance, NE area in 1981, and those cars look appropriate for it. They're probably not an exact match but they get my 'close enough' award for an early unit coal train hopper. I ordered 30 of them undecorated in one batch special order, and had custom decals made for this train. If any other car on the ATSF had yellow lettering, I've never seen it, and that was the real issue: I cut the weights down by half - the cars were too heavy, put them on MT roller bearing trucks, and used thin black craft foam sheets cut to shape for the coal loads. When unit trains started, the car sets were incredibly uniform, if fell apart later. But the genesis of the unit train concept was the 70's. I know the BN sets I saw at Alliance were incredibly uniform, maybe 1 or 2 oddball cars in a 90-car train. This was really the only train like this at the time on ATSF. BN had a lot more. http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=269142&nseq=2 http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=45924&nseq=0 This was also the era when railroads owned their own unit coal train cars. By the 80's the utilities owned by far in a way the majority after the concept was proven.
BN had/has both the Roundhouse/MDC/Athearn Thrall gons and the Atlas style 3-bay hoppers. If the cars don't have any BN markings then they are probably owned by a power company and you'll have to do some research.
