hoppers
Hoppers...
Hoppers are the most plentiful type of car on
Chessie. You can run trains of nothing but hoppers and be
prototypically correct. These "Unit" trains as they are
called make up between 10 and 20% of trains on the East End.
West Virginia coal mines were the primary source of coal for major
eastern cities and export through eastern ports in the 1970's and
80's. Much of this coal got there by running over the East
End to Philadelphia and Baltimore. A typical Chessie coal
train would have several different sized hoppers, each size being
seen in either the predecessor or Chessie paint. Bowser
makes the best 100 ton hopper and Stewart makes an excellent 70
ton hopper. Below are links to pics of my hoppers.
Also, there are several pics of hoppers with the plastic "hopper
topper" on them. These are very characteristic of
Chessie. Only Chessie and Conrail had them that I know
of. Conrails were white, so the yellow ones scream
Chessie. These cars were used to convert a hopper into a
temporary covered hopper for surge demand periods like fall
harvests.
Finally, there are pics of Walthers XXX "moonshine" hoppers.
These older hoppers were restricted to just their home
rails. The large XXX was painted to let the crews know not
to interchange these cars with another railroad. Hoppers in
the predecessor paint jobs and Chessie paint could be seen with
the XXX. Use a pic to do one correctly. They also had
yellow ends.
