I suppose these would qualify as my latest purchases. All four are ACCURAIL covered hoppers. The three ribbed sides are renumbered with the Accurail decals. These are really fun to build. These would have hauled grains or minerals on the D&RGW. Some of these are still in service, with different reporting marks. These were build in 1974, by Pullman Standard. The 15595 is/was built by American Car and Foundry in 1973.
A couple of recently finished projects, an Athearn RTR WP caboose with weathered trucks and new couplers, and an older Walthers bay window kit:
I recently purchased the old Life-Like supply house. I was wondering if anyone else here has ever built this kit, and what did they do to improve it? Sent from my IdeaTab S6000-F using Tapatalk
For D&RGW, Accurails new CF4750 ribbed covered hopper is very nice for a kit hopper with as fine of details you could ask for in an easy to build kit. I've seen some dress them up with a few details such as the air line etc. The Accurail CF4600 is a hopper D&RGW never owned according to my review of Jim Eagers Color Guide book, however if you are up to the task, you could get extra parts and convert it to four bays, and if you can cut off the roof supports and put on a Plano 13 support roof walk, you would effectively have an ACF CF5250 covered hopper which D&RGW did own. \ While the Athearn model is a 5250, besides being more crude it also represents a slightly different version, the model having the angle iron stiffeners on the sides. Also it has been reported to be dimensionally off from the prototype. The Accurail CF4600 of course is dimensionally off too, so both models are off from the prototype so it's a lessor of the evils. The Accurail model does have the correct twin bead stiffeners on the upper side sill chord so the main things you need to modify is change it from 3 bays to 4 bays and change out the roof walk to the earlier 13 supports version. Then you will have pretty "visually close" CF5250 ACF hopper, at least until a newly tooled, more accurate model is finally offered by a company such as Scale Trains, Tangent, ExactRail or whoever. Many have been asking for an updated CF5250 so eventually someone will probably tool up an up-to-date version. Here is a photo of the prototype for reference.
I saw the 15516 on a UP train just yesterday. It looked pretty good (no graffiti) for a car from 1973...
Some years ago I built up a fifty car train of Athearn Ice Bunkers in PFE> Train looks good with a four unit set of Black widow F units pulling it.
Jim offers a great suggestion to build the unique Rio Grande 5250 hopper. But for those who haven't gotten bogged down in the minutiae of covered hopper details and differences, there's a little more than initially meets the eye. Besides the number of bays, the style of stiffener on the side and the alternating thick/thin running board supports, the ACF 4600cf covered hopper is a Plate B car and the ACF 5250cf covered hopper is a Plate C car. The difference between Plate B and Plate C? Plate B cars are shorter in height than Plate C cars, up to 5 inches shorter. See the clearance diagrams here: http://www.icrr.net/plates.htm If you have an Atlas or Intermountain ACF 4650 hopper and an Accurail ACF 4600 hopper, compare them side by side. The Accurail car is shorter in height than either the Atlas or Intermountain car. The Accurail car is also much longer than either the Atlas or Intermountain car. The two prototype cars - the 4600 cubic foot car and the 4650 cubic foot car - are very similar in cubic capacity, but because the cross-section of the Plate B car is shorter in height, it must make up the difference in length to carry a comparable load. The ACF 4600 and the 5250 are similar in length, but the larger cross-section of the Plate C car allows the larger volume in a similar length car. I point this out because to my eye there is a stark difference between Plate B and Plate C hoppers. I would not attempt a model of a Plate B car with the larger Plate C body and vice versa. Instead I would either start with the Athearn 5250 model or a pair of either the Atlas or Intermountain ACF 4650 models spliced together for the correct length. Jim points out one of the major spotting features of the late 5250 hoppers owned by Rio Grande, the carbody side stiffener. The single stiffening angle welded onto the cylindrical carbody on early ACF Centerflow hoppers was common to various sizes of these cars up to 1970. A design change was made at this time that eliminated the welded angle and replaced it with the fluted upper portion of the carbody (compared to a flat part without flutes on the pre-70 cars). Compare the carbody side of the Rio Grande car shown above and this earlier Great Northern car: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3158342 I've modeled the early stiffener on an Accurail car but I have not modeled the late fluted stiffener on an early car. That's not to say it can't be done, just that I haven't come up with a good way to do it. Though the difference between Plate B and Plate C cars is stark to me, the challenge of modeling the late stiffener could be enough to overlook the difference in height. Since you need four bays anyway, unless you start with the crude Athearn (or even more crude Bachmann) 5250, you'll need two cars to make the model. If you're up to the challenge of splicing two cars, start with a pair of the post-1970 4650 hoppers from either Atlas or Intermountain. Although I already have one of the Athearn 5250 hoppers I intend to use to build the Great Northern car I linked above, I may just take my own advice and use a pair of Atlas or Intermountain cars to do the prototype justice.
I haven't tried the fit it. I have some extra bottom Accurail parts but I need to find a diagram for the measurements so I can cut 3-bays up and make a 4 bay bottom; I used to have the scale drawings but lost it.
Ryan, All true of course. Yes, true about the measurements. Back when I lived in upstate NY and was going to tackle the project, Eric Cote of Accurail pointed out that the Athearn 5250 was too long and yes, the Accurail 4600 being a plate B was shorter than the 5250. Either car was not going to be correct dimensionally so the Accurail hack was a relatively simple way to get a visually correct 5250 for D&RGW. For what it's worth, I don't think the Atlas or IMR 4650 were out when I first was going to start that conversion so those options weren't on the table. I'm not sure even if they were, that I'd be able to splice two bodies and have them come out looking good. Things went sideways for me about that time I was going to start the 4600 to 5250 conversion and I was forced to move out went into separation and eventually divorce to my modeling went south for a number of years and the project got dropped unfortunately. I would like to have some D&RGW 5250's so it's a project I could still take on assuming another manufacturer doesn't finally come out with a HQ 5250 in the next year.
The 5250 as a high-quality model would be a great thrill for me, even though I don't need many. I hope we see it soon.
I've seen many asking for a modern tooled 5250 so it sure seems like someone is going to eventually step up to the plate. That would be a good candidate for ScaleTrains.
Charlie: I have a fourty car train of those MDC/Roundhouse MPSX hoppers. They make a good looking train with KCS White SD40-2's on it.
As it happends, a new run of the 5-bay Ortners base on the upgraded MDC tooling are now out which include a number of paint schemes. I'm hoping to pick up two more 5-packs of the CSDPU hoppers soon. Originally I had six 5-packs (30) of the CSDU hoppers which are 1986 and later, but I've decided to backdate mainly to caboose era. D&RGW repainted the 1979 built 5-bay Ortner hoppers originally painted in CSDPU markings to CSDU in 1986 due to legal issues. I had none of the CSDPU hoppers a few years ago but have been treasure hunting them and have sold off a couple 5-packs of my CSDU hoppers to help fund the earlier version. The two 5-packs I sold were duplicate road numbers of CSDU anyway. So far I've scared up four 5-packs and a single, all from the 2nd run from 2010, so another couple packs will get me up to 30. I still have 20 of the CSDU, which I imaging may have run mixed with the CSDPU for a while during the re-lettering process. From what I have been able to tell, Athearn has done 3 runs of the CSDU now (three 5-packs, three more 5-packs + one, and two 5-packs + one) so there are a total of 42 individual numbers of the RTR version produced. I believe the same is true for the CSDPU version - if one can track down all the number run, there are 42 numbers available also in RTR. All of the CSDPU I've managed to treasure hunt are from the second run; the first run seem to be harder to find so far. Athearn did a nice job of upgrading them.
Going English these days. A Southern Railway S15 4-6-0. Originally built as a freight engine, but used more as a mixed traffic locomotive later on in its career.
I like the OO British steamers. I received this loco as my going away gift from RAF Lakenheath in 2004.