Covered hoppers

[Charles Smiley]

I was looking through an old August 1962 MR issue (page 10) and I saw an article on the "new" Model Die Casting HO covered hopper. It's hard to beleive this is almost 50 years ago! The article mentioned that this was the first authentic looking covered hopper - "at last". Molded on grab irons, ladders, horn-hook couplers, and all.

Here are three that I kit bashed with wire grab irons, and ladders, Square instead of round hatches, cut out panels on the sides and Kadee trucks and couplers. I think I made these around 1970 or so.

I remember ones like this on the SP San Ramon branch back in 1962 - and I really wanted them. If you wanted those features back then you could either buy expensive brass cars, scratchbuild or kit bash.

Now Intermountain makes ones like this for around $30.00 that are even better.

[flyboy2610]

Those are nice hoppers! The new ones may be more expensive, but I highly doubt they're 'better'!

[Rico]

Nice job CS!

[zoegraf]

Nice work. Look good. Thanks for sharing.

[kenw]

Love those. I have quite a few from various makers on my Knippa, Lytle and Western. With the Eagle Ford drilling boom in the area, frac sand is in high demand and every available railcar is pressed into service!

IIRC (I've lost my inventory file) I have some from Bowser, Roundhouse, Atlas and perhaps some others. At one point I was buying every 'cement hopper' I could find in the LHS..... I've replaced the trucks with sprung frames/metal wheels.

I had a much old one, believe it was a 30 ton, smaller than these. It became a sand storage hopper at the service track....

[Charles Smiley]

I get a kick out of buying old issues of MR and RMC to see 'where we have been' as a hobby. So many items I bought are collector's items now. A lot of manufacturers are gone as well as some good shops. I try to buy issues that I don't recognize the covers. Some shops around here bring in box loads of them occasionally.

It's amazing that you can spot covers from even 50 years ago and know you've seen them before. There are gaps in my modeling (girls, college, girls, cars, girls, etc) so I prefer MRR magazines from years I missed.