Covered hoppers

How'z this?

Rusty

Here's a Seaboard Whalebelly Hopper I built years ago, I guess it could count:

Here's the prototype:

My grain train.

State of Washington grain train

  Bill

More grain, from north of the border.

Covered Hopper Unit train on my Layout

A unit train is a freight train carrying the same type of commodity, from origin to destination. ... The locomotives pulling the train will usually stay connected from origin to destination and return with empty cars.

I was familiar with unit trains as Alcoa used them from my childhood company town, to transport alumina from the alumina refinery in Point Comfort, TX to the aluminum smelter in Rockdale, TX.  We loaded and shipped 25-30, 100 ton covered hopper cars each day, 365 d/y by unit train.

I thought it would be neat to have a unit trains for common commodities on my railroad layout.  So I made and collected some covered hopper cars used for alumina and they can be run on the layout even though I do not have an alumina refinery to load them.

Posted from my topic linked below.

https://ogrforum.com/...ra-027-layout?page=4

Charlie

Bob Delbridge posted:

Here's a Seaboard Whalebelly Hopper I built years ago, I guess it could count:

Here's the prototype:

That is cool; nice job!

Tuscan Jim posted:

Bob Delbridge posted:

Here's a Seaboard Whalebelly Hopper I built years ago, I guess it could count:

Here's the prototype:

That is cool; nice job!

Thanks!!!  I wouldn't have ever attempted it if it wasn't for the late Ed Reutling giving me a push.

We were talking once and we both mentioned that we'd like to build one, his for SCL and mine for SAL.  Within a couple off days he was well  on his way, converting a Weaver 50' tankcar, and convinced me I could do it too.  It was not as difficult as I had thought.

I think I've got enough decals left for 1 more plus I've got some nice photos of the underside that weren't available when this was built.

Like I've said before...it's making that first cut that is the hardest thing to do!