I have a bunch of RailKing Semiscale four bay hoppers that look great as they travel around my railway. But, after the first dozen have rolled by they start looking a bit monotonous. I'd like to add a little variety to the consist by finding some different semiscale hoppers that would look appropriate intermixed.
Any suggestions? Roadnames are not at all important.
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go for the ribbed sided 3 and two bay hopper cars. Weaver made dozens of them.
Weaver made nothing "semi-scale" - all their products were full 1:48. But, even a 1:48 2-bay hopper is not a large car, so unless you want "short" (and typically narrow) versions of "long" cars, stick with full-scale models of smaller prototypes, like the 2-bay. Lots of road names to choose from; hoppers were not usually colorful cars, if that matters (I like them "monotonous").
These semi-scale can be presentable, but are all a bit narrow:
The Lionel 4-bay PW hopper (cloned by Williams, MTH, later Lionel, maybe others), covered and open, is a handsome car, often cheap on daBay. K-line/RMT versions of the Marx 2-bay are nice; RMT covered hoppers (nice K-line-design trucks, I believe).
Check out the neat color scheme on the menards cars
Since you mentioned semi-scale, any K-line 2 bay or Lionel 2 bay cars would work. Especially the MPC era Lionel. They came in a variety of colors and are inexpensive also. Or, you can paint and letter you own into something more interesting...
Or, you can vary the load they carry. Not just coal, but Iron ore, ballast, limestone, sand, wood chips, coke and so on. How a bout a train of empties. For every loaded train, the is a corresponding empty one.
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