Sunset's B&O wagon top covered hoppers

B&O had only 200 of these cars in Class N-34, built in the early 1940s. That's why photos of them in service are not easily found. Most were used in captive on line service, usually for sand and materials used in glass making in the West Virginia area. B&O tended to assign them to certain customers. 

Several were also assigned to Halliburton. They carried powdered materials related to oil well drilling and usually got into Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.

Near the end of their service lives, these cars also carried cement as well as some highly corrosive chemicals. Duryea underframes were eventually banned from interchange in the 1960s and all the N-34 wagontop covered hoppers had them. So they were scrapped as they neeed repairs. Ditto for the M-53 class wagontop box cars because they also had Duryea underfmraes.

The Sunset car is basically fairly good. However, I think the rivet detail on them is oversized and the gray paint is too dark. Hallmark made similar errors in their B&O wagon top covered hoppers. Also the couplers should extend farther by 3/16" to better model the Duryea underframe feature. While the lettering looks OK, it's not in a true B&O freight car font but its passable.

I have two 3rd Rail and one Hallmark. One 3rd Rail was re painted and decaled. Because it's so hard to get the paint off I never did the second.  Painted the Hallmark but still haven't got around to decals.
Maybe not perfect but still the best wagontop hoppers on in O scale.

They look pretty good to me, Sand must have come out of Gore WVa unless is some other sand for traction.

I don't think I have seen these cars anywhere else but here.

Thank you once again Ed, you are a treasure in the Beano World.

If you look around a bit you can find them at prices that are an absolute steal. Perfect, no, but very nice cars regardless.

Simon

Thanks for the info, gents!  They're sharp cars, but it sounds like they did not make it my way (northwest Jersey) frequently, so funds will be redirected to cars that did.

Brian

According to my information, the car numbers were in the range, 630300 to 630499, for a total of 200 cars.

Regards,

Ed