Lionel's NEW 4bay hopper car..Show some of your favorite 4 bay cars

Good Evening Bill,

I have the Lionel BNSF and KCS Aluminum ACF 3-Bay Hoppers. I think the Lionel Aluminum Hoppers are some of the best offered in O Scale. All the railroads you mentioned would be fantastic in 3-Car or 5-Car sets!

I'm ready to buy when they supply!

Regards,

Frank

Some of my other favorite hopper cars are:

These look very much like the aluminum hoppers bodied hoppers that K-Line produced years ago....???  Very nice Bill!

Alan

Good Evening Bill,

I’d like to see a production run on the Lionel Western Pacific Aluminum ACF 3-Bay Hopper in a 3-Car pack or 5-Car pack.

Regards,

Frank

While not all 4 bay, here is my collection of Lionel aluminum hoppers.

These Lionel aluminum ACF hoppers are more than a few years old now.  The brass walkways are outstanding, and the general sound from the aluminum body is nice. Here is the one I have:

Here is my Lionel Chessie 4 Bay Alum. Hopper. 

That is not what was shown in the Lionel 2012 catalogs.

It looks like the Lionel changed the extruded aluminum ACF Center Flow 3-Bay Covered Hoppers from the 1965-1972 version to the Post-1972 version, which means they could have made a correction to make the GTW a 3-bay and the G.N. a 4-Bay.

Now they can make the Chicago & North Western and Soo Line ACF Center Flow 3-bay Covered Hoppers with the correct details.

Why did no one at Lionel know about the changes made to the ACF Center Flow 3-Bay Covered Hopper and make a big announcement????

Andrew

As show in the photo above the Grand Trunk Western ACF Center Flow 3-Bay Covered Hoppers are not/were not 4-bay covered hoppers. Now that Lionel has had the body style changed for the 3-bay hoppers, they can make this car exactly, and they better have the Trough Grain Hatches, not the round hatches.

Andrew

Hope that Lionel will consider more of these 4 bay hoppers in the following road names:

Could use more of the Aluminum 4 Bay Grain Hoppers

 CN

 CP RAIL

 Alberta

 Saskatchewan ( Green w/flower)

 Ontario Northland

Those Canadian Railroads used Cylindrical 4-Bay Hoppers built by Marine Industries, Hawker-Siddeley, and National Steel Car, quite a bit different than the ACF Center Flow 4-Bay Hopper.

There are copywrite and trademark issues for the Saskatchewan Green Repaint covered hoppers. They would have to be exact replicas and Lionel would have to pay the guys at North American Railcar Corporation.

http://www.northamericanrailca...ion.com/products.htm

Andrew

Here are some of mine.  Matt

http://www.trainlife.com/magaz...ovember-1994-page-35

http://www.trainlife.com/artic...flow-covered-hoppers

ACF Center Flow 4-Bay Covered Hoppers with a 5250 Cubic Foot Capacity.

They could make Santa Fe ATSF with the Gray Body and Black & White graphics.

Railroad names to make for this ACF 4-Bay 5250 Cu. Ft. 

Elgin, Joliet & Eastern

Kansas City Southern

SCL/Family Lines System

some of the other operators:

ADM

Chemplex Plastics

Dry Branch Kaolin

Goodyear

B.F. Goodrich

Andrew

Hi Frank, I do like all styles of the hopper cars but I think I like the 4 bay best. I have some 2 and 3 bay hoppers. Most of mine are MTH but some are lionel. I do like the series that Lionel is running in the 4 bay. They have a very nice clean line look to them.

Good Day,

One of my favorite's the KCS Grain Train.............................

Regards,

Frank

Alan those silver ATSF Hoppers are my K-Line 4 bay hoppers. I really thinl K-Line did a great job with forwaed thinking products. The only draw back is that the paint job on these units is quite delicate and needs to be handeled with CARE.

drelo, Very nice set of 3 and 4 bay hoppers. Thanks for sharing them with us.

 I don't have any pics to add yet. My cars match what's already posted exept I have the D&H also. These Lionel cars are some of my favorites. I would like to thank them for raising the bar on freight cars with good details and yet sturdy construction. These hoppers, TT tank cars, mech reefers, and now the autocarriers are very nice. So I'm excited to see what car is next.

NJ O GAUGE VERY NICE CONRAIL HOPPER.

No 4 bays but I have several 3 bay, recently finished putting together a BNSF grain train. Great looking pieces everyone!

Surefire Very nice looking BNSF Grain train. Looked like about 16 hopper cars and a couple of different styles. I like the new ABQ that you have. TWD did a nice job on them. Also see the new Lionel transformer very nice.

Thank you! You are correct, 16 hoppers. 

Not aluminum, but here are some more.

PS-2's (These were awesomely detailed by Lionel):

Cylindrical:

2 Bay:

joe

Joe your Cylindrical HOPPERS ARE OUTSTANDING!!! Wow hope that one of the mfg's will produce all those Cylindrical Hoppers in 4 BAY. Thank you for sharing.

thanks, it took a long time to find all variations but they are some of my favorites and make a beautiful unit train led by a CN dash 9.

here are the others:

joe

WOW Joe you have many many of my favorute RR and color schemes. DID you find them in LHS or on dabayor a combo? I would like to find the green one in your other post above andthe nice CP Rail in black. Thanks again for posting your great collection of Drain cars.

over several years i found almost all at Greenberg shows or on ebay, the last one just a couple of months ago.  All of those that were only produced once by Lionel, including the green one, are hard to come by, especially the older ones produced around 2002-2005.  Maybe the hardest one to find is the Saskatchewan Grain 17189 Brown/Orange one but i will give you a lead that there is one on ebay right now.  This is one of my favorites of the group.

I wish this one would be produced in O scale (i posted this pic before in your CN thread)

joe

also, the CP grain train that Lionel released around 2005 contained most of these.  It still goes for a premium but would be a great way to grab a bunch in one shot and included one with an EOT device.

joe

The Lionel cars are quite nice. Drelo, I was curious about your Santa Fe ACF -- is that the one from the latest catalogue, and have they shipped? That's one I could use.

The four-bay ACF cars are not actually grain cars. These are usually used for plastics and other materials (though I admit to having cheated and and used a few of my Weaver four-bays to pad out grain trains too).

Here is my BNSF earthworm grain train:



By the ATSF is my true favorite, and here is a westbound grain train:

Rich,

Can you please tell me the manufacturer and perhaps product number for the gray GATX hopper in your BNSF video?

thanks

joe

Detail shots of the Lionel PS2.  Right-click and open-in-new-window to view them larger:

SB,

that is a beautiful car.  it is on my wish list, along with this one:

joe

Rich aia hsve always seen Rice come in the 100 ton 4 bay cylindrical hoppers

Rich, it is item number 6-27490 from the 2012 volume 2 catalog.

Just an FYI: The actual production car is quite different than lionel's catalog pic.  It's grey and has the wheat on it.  Still very nice.  Here is a pic Atlas L and Lionel R:

Good Day,

Any pictures of the Lionel CSX 4-Bay Hopper model number 6-27071?

Regards,

Swafford

thanks, even better

Joe did you get any of these 4 bay hoppers?