Well I am in the process of building my new HO scale Nashville and Eastern railroad and am looking for some of these for my layout.I am new to the HO scene so any help would be appreciated.Here is the link... Gallery
National Steel Car makes those. Go to their Railcar Showroom, and select open-top hopper. They even have a blueprint there. The bad news is, I don't think anyone makes these in HO (yet). Maybe brass, but that's a chunk of change for a big fleet. The closest you're going to come in plastic is probably the Walthers Ortner cars.
Hi, Thomas, I have a similar problem to yours in trying to match a prototype. albeit a much older one. For the time being you may have to settle for something close to what your looking for, while you kitbash a fleet of cars to match the ones you are looking for. In my case, I am planning to model the Hocking Valley Railroad in Ohio around the turn of the last century. The HV was a coal hauler and had a fleet of drop bottom gons which I will have to kitbash from other models. In addition most coal hoppers available today in plastic seem to be models from the 1930's onward. Good Luck to both of us. Dave Ruffner
