1. BurlingtonRoute

    BurlingtonRoute TrainBoard Member

    227
    3
    16
    Its great to see 3 bay hoppers again. It would be nice to see a whole string of them . Anyone out there want to get together, and see if we could talk someone into making a run of 6 or 8 cars? GP7s are on the horizon, and a train full of hoppers would look pretty good behind them.

    Might even make a good start set? I am biased for the Midwest. Artwork is done for the Mopac. It should also not be hard to get a string of CB&Q cars either (they would go right into the BN era too). They have been done in 2 bay, but you certainly can run a mix of the 2 cars.
     
  2. Kurt Moose

    Kurt Moose TrainBoard Member

    9,813
    14,199
    147
    If they come out in Milwaukee Road-I'm in!!
     
  3. Kez

    Kez TrainBoard Member

    755
    665
    32
    I'm pretty sure I have enough of the originals to put together a 50 or 60 car hopper train myself, but they're all eastern roads!
     
  4. BurlingtonRoute

    BurlingtonRoute TrainBoard Member

    227
    3
    16
    Some people like to run a coal hoppers from a dozen different companies together. But this was not normal. Unless it was after a merger perhaps, or some Peabody or some power or steel company cars. Even those would have whole big line of the same cars. It´s not about having 60 different hoppers, its about having 60 from same railroad.
     
  5. mgatdog

    mgatdog TrainBoard Member

    51
    73
    13
    Yes ,I agree . I contacted the guys at MTL 2 months ago asking them to run some 8 paks instead of just singles all the time. I guess we will have to wait and see.
     
  6. BurlingtonRoute

    BurlingtonRoute TrainBoard Member

    227
    3
    16
    I am really happy that MTL did make large runs in the past of hoppers. I hope they will continue. Even Märklin had packs of 5. AZL had runs of modern ones. You see how cool it looks with those long strings of fruit express trains for example, I jsut want the same thing, for coal trains. And what is cool about the 2 and 3 bay hoppers is, they certainly overlap time periods. I have no problem mixing MT and MTL hoppers,(or anyone else) . as most coal haulers who had equipment from the 20s to the 70s had mixtures of cars made by different companies during different time periods.
     
  7. tjdreams

    tjdreams TrainBoard Member

    473
    607
    24
    X2 The strings I see around here are 95% all one road with the occasional group of 2 to 4 oddballs stuck in here and there.
     
  8. shamoo737

    shamoo737 Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

    4,596
    550
    72
    It doesn't matter to me that they have the same numbers. What I want is for the string of cars to look the same but different. What I mean is they should be from the same railroad, but I don't want all the cars to looks the same. With my coal drag, I use hoppers from FR, AZL, and Penzzee. The FR Coalporters are painted in the white scheme. I also try to weather each car and add graffiti so that each car is unique.
     
  9. BurlingtonRoute

    BurlingtonRoute TrainBoard Member

    227
    3
    16
    You hit it right on the money. There are a few books about modeling coal trains out there. Lot of factors, region , era, railroad. Closer to the mine itself, that is perhaps service by several railroads, It is not unusual to see different railroads. The mine my father worked at was serviced by the IC, CB&Q (Later BN and ICG) and the Mopac. Switching was done on a rotational basis, and so there was either a Mopac or a Q engine pushing the cars.
     
  10. BurlingtonRoute

    BurlingtonRoute TrainBoard Member

    227
    3
    16
  11. jim29t

    jim29t TrainBoard Member

    59
    0
    13
    During World War 2 there was a shortage of railcars. The railroads used whatever they could find to move traffic. Unit trains were unheard of. It was not unusual to find a complete mix of cars, especially hoppers. The coal had to be moved. I grew up in that time period and lived in coal country. Jim
     
  12. tjdreams

    tjdreams TrainBoard Member

    473
    607
    24
    There is not enough room for 60 3 bay hoppers on my test track
    But I can run 42 C&O two bay hoppers

    [video=youtube;EVWs_gHzyxg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVWs_gHzyxg&feature=share&list=UUZRyV2m9ox QRBb5_MvyRB1Q[/video]

    PS If anyone has Micro Trains Runner Pack 994 00 802. The C&O 2 bay hoppers they are willing to part with or knows of a dealer with a set in stock please contact me
     
  13. BurlingtonRoute

    BurlingtonRoute TrainBoard Member

    227
    3
    16
    That is so true during WW2. How many folks model WW2? There are always exceptions and depending on the railroad and area and time period. IC, CB&Q, Mopac serviced the mine my father and brother worked at, and they all connected and crossed in multiple places, The switching was done on a rotational contact, so you would have Mopac pushing the Q one year and turned around the next. But from as far back as I can rember as a kid to when I left home, you would see Mopac on the mopac track with nothing but Mopac coal cars, IC(later ICG) with IC coalcars going down their tracks in another direction, and Q (later BN) going down the track with their cars going a third. Throw in the odd stuff because of mergers, and an odd car or two bringing machinery to the mines. No, there are just a mixed bunch of cars that are sold and people are happy with their engines pulling whatever round and round and if they are happy with that, who am I to judge. It just would not make ME happy on my railroad.
     
  14. Flashwave

    Flashwave TrainBoard Member

    967
    14
    17
    I think part of that is due to shortages of coal hoppers in unique numbers of the same scheme. Either you run duplicate numbers, which is ugly in ops, renumber the cars which is cake for pros but for newer people somewht tedious, or you mix the roadnames like they did during the mega mergers


    Sent from my LG-LS970 using Tapatalk
     
  15. BurlingtonRoute

    BurlingtonRoute TrainBoard Member

    227
    3
    16
    I agree. And you can only hide so much with weathering. I am picking the lesser of the evils and running duplicate (and triplicate ect) numbers.
     
  16. Loren

    Loren TrainBoard Supporter

    1,532
    80
    32
    And you say you can read those numbers up close? Must be a lot younger than me :eek:)
     

Share This Page