Updating the car fleet plan: covered hoppers

I have often written in this blog about fleets of freight cars: what kinds of cars were historically present, how one might identify the needs for a particular railroad, or for a particular area on a particular railroad; and how to proportion a model car fleet in a realistic way. Among the posts addressing those issues, and also containing links to all my 2011 posts about my own car fleet, is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/02/keeping-model-car-fleet-under-control.html . 

 One of the fleet components I have been re-assessing is my covered hoppers. Let me begin by emphasizing that cars of this type were not common at all in 1953, the year I model. They are ubiquitous today, but not in 1953, comprising only a few percent of the national fleet in those days. 

Back in 2011, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, above, I included a covered hopper plan in my fleet summaries (here’s a link to that specific post: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/02/choosing-model-car-fleet-6-covered.html ). The dominant cargo carried in covered hoppers in 1953 was cement, by a large margin. Grain carriage was years in the future, and dry chemical shipments were just getting established.

 Accordingly, nearly all my covered hoppers are weathered and waybilled for cement service. An example is below, from Union Pacific’s first class of these hoppers, painted boxcar red. As is obvious, this wasn’t a great choice of color, and all subsequent UP covered hoppers were light gray, along with most of the rest of railroading. The car is being switched at Shumala on my layout, and like all the cars shown in this post, originated as an InterMountain model. (You can click on the image to enlarge.)

But there are a few exceptions. I have rostered several such exceptions, but these are operated sparingly, in light of their relative rarity. Nevertheless, Ed Hawkins and Pat Wider documented a great many different leased covered hoppers, to a wide range of industries, in the Railway Prototype Cyclopedia (RP Cyc), especially Volume 30 (2015). In the photo below, a car leased by North American Car Co. (marks NAHX) to American Postash & Chemical, being blocked for pickup at Shumala, is just crossing Chamisal Road.

Many industrial companies, of course bought their own cars, as also documented in RP Cyc issues 27, 28 and 30. For example, here is a car owned by General Electric used to move glass sand, closely following prototype photos. We see it here in a passing mainline train on my layout.

Finally, the leasing companies kept some cars simply under their own reporting marks for flexibility in assignments. All of the “Big Three” lessors did this (General American, in their covered hopper division, marks GACX; Shippers Car line, under SHPX; and North American, under NAHX). An example is this car from the GACX fleet, seen bringing up the rear of the Santa Rosalia Local in my layout town of Ballard.

This car was one of my “small projects” awhile back (a description is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/10/small-project-repurposing-covered-hopper.html ).

All these examples offer a change from the far more numerous railroad-owned covered hoppers in the early 1950s, and though all of these are authentic schemes, as I mentioned, I do operate them sparingly.

Tony Thompson