My friends, I have found so much conflicting information about coal cars I'm very confused and was hoping you folks might be able to help me out. The era of our layout, as many of you know, cuts off at 1930. I'm looking for C&O coal cars that would be appropriate for 1900 to 1930s. I know there will be various types and that wasn't uncommon to have different types of hoppers on the same train. Any help would be really appreciated!
Have you tried the C&O Historical Society? That I think would be your best bet unless you could locate a book that covered it.
Have you tried the C&O Historical Society? Check out these photos (scroll down about 3/4th way to see the coal hoppers from 1897-1930s). Those early wood ones look like a great scratching project! Take a short flatcar from Fine N Scale (resin) or N Scale Kits (white metal) or CG N Scale (FUD) and build up the wooden walls & stakes. Hope this helps.
Ben, here is another link to the C&O Historical Society with a ton of pictures of 50 and 55 ton hoppers in the early 1900 - 1930s. You'll need to scroll down just a little ways, but you will find Hopper Heaven! http://cohs.org/cgi-bin/cohs_search.pl?st=55+ton+hopper&textsubmit=GO&tr=AND&io=YES&lp=1&sl=100 Hope this helps ya.
You guys are awesome. I have been on COHS but either didn't have the patience to look through the photos or was running the wrong search! Guess I've got some scratch building in my future.
Another COHS search would be something like 192 hopper, this will show the images they have from the 1920s: http://cohs.org/cgi-bin/cohs_search.pl?st=192+HOPPER&textsubmit=GO&tr=AND&io=YES&lp=1&sl=100 There are some readily available cars that would work, like a Micro-Trains 2-bay with flat ends, or Model Power 4 bay units.
There is a book called"Freight Car Equipment of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway,August 1,1937" which has a ton of info on the C&O freight equipment of the era in question. There is arund 40 pages on coal hoppers alone. They can be found used for around $15 n Amazon. Its an invaluable tool for that era. http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0870123793/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used
You are welcome! There also is a lot of other freight cars of the era. In a way the section on gondolas is my favorite. There are so many unique C&O gons.
I just picked up the above mentioned C&O book as well. A nice bit of history. Black and white photos of a number of C&O cars of the period and plenty of text. I'm sure it was used as a reference for models.
