You probably know: http://www.athearn.com/newsletter/092209/27_N_3_bay_hop_5_092209.jpg Athearn has finally announced a run of the old MDC peaked end rib side 70 ton hoppers in N&W (both the 1951 and 1963 schemes). This peaked end tooling has been dormant since Athearn bought MDC in 2004. Peaked ends were a feature of nearly 100% of all N&W hoppers from the 1930s through the early 1960s. They are essential to any N&W modeler from the 1930s through the early 1990s. It seems that Athearn ignored my annual emails (yes I've sent them emails about the peaked end hoppers every year since 2005 with lots of information) and decided to paint these up for N&W class H-10 (the N&W class H2a is a closer match to the MDC body). Putting that aside, and realizing that this hopper is a "stand in" for either the H10 or H2a, the lettering in the artwork looks pretty good (except for a few things). Number one, if these are to be N&W H-10, then the number series must be 34000-41999 (The artwork shows number series in that happen to be from the ex-NKP offset hoppers (279072) they did, and the H-34 VGN hoppers N&W completed in 1960 (76501) that Athearn also did - so hopefully it's the artist being lazy and the production models will be correct) Secondly, the artwork shows COTS stenciling, which would suggest they are painting them from 1970s or later photos. I think 1950s/1960s modelers might not want to have to remove these stencils, so why not letter them as built? There are plenty of builders photos available. Also, for the 1950s scheme most of the early production featured a triangle on the left side of the car. Here are some builders photos for the H-10: N&W Builders Photos of Class H-10: #35500 side view: http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/full/ns2118.jpeg #35500 end view: http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/full/ns2171.jpeg #34001: http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/full/ns2114.jpeg #35328: http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/full/ns2115.jpeg #41999 side view: http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/full/ns2121.jpeg #41999 end view: http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/full/ns2170.jpeg N&W 1960s repaint: #41892: http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/full/ns2117.jpeg #41892 again: http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/full/ns2120.jpeg This is a bit frustrating for me as Athearn did their homework pretty well on the earlier releases of N&W (ex-NKP) offset triples and N&W (ex-VGN) flat end rib side triples. Last week, I contacted Athearn about these things (email, FAX, voice mail, letter) - I'm hoping that it's just a goof-up in the flyer art. Hopefully I'll hear back positively from them. Mark
