Any recommendations for an affordable (i.e. plastic, not die cast) 2-bay hopper set? Would like at least 6 hoppers in same road, preferably PRR. I looked at the Menards, but those 4-bay hoppers look pretty huge compared with a lot of my engines and rolling stock. I'm thinking of running these with a Junior Berk.
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If you can track them down the Atlas Industrial Rail hoppers might be what you're looking for.
http://www.atlaso.com/IR/ircoalhop.htm
Ebay has a number of Frisco hoppers right now, the seem to be averaging $30 a piece.
Jerry
And not just Industrial Rail.
K-Line made the 5000-series (from the MARX mold) brown PRR hopper for many years. A little smaller than the Lionel traditional 2-bay hopper, but easy to find. K-Line also made a black PRR covered 2-bay hopper (from the KUSAN mold) under the Train-19 banner. This car was identical to one K-Line had cataloged earlier, but the Train-19 version has the very nice die-cast trucks included on all the Train-19 cars.
In the 2013 RTR catalog Lionel had a traditional black PRR hopper (6-26452)made with plastic trucks. There was another one with the regular non-circle keystone logo, the 6-16497. Lionel MPC /LTI cataloged other PRR hoppers, so you'll have to search. There was a grey one sometime late 1980's - early 1990's.
RMT also made a grey PRR covered hopper from the same mold as the K-Line Train-19 car. But you could replace the cover with a coal load on both the RMT and K-Line covered hoppers.
A nice bonus to Atlas IR car above noted by Jerry, is that they were made with 2 road numbers. The RMT car also might have been... that I don't remember though many other RMT cars were. One down side to the Industrial Rail hoppers (at least the original ones before Atlas) is that the glued the molded coal load into the car. And the way they made it, the load sits flush with the top edges of the car. All the others have coal loads that sit lower into the car. Not a big deal, but worth taking note of.
Also MTH Rugged Rails made a 4-bay PRR grey hopper. It is smaller than the Lionel 4-bay hopper, which is what the Menard's one is modeled after, or the similar Williams 4-bay hopper. Industrial Rail also made a 4-bay hopper, and like the MTH Rugged Rails version, it is smaller also - but no Pennsy.
Williams by Bachmann also has remade the K-Line 55-ton outside braced 2-bay coal hopper in PRR. It's more detailed than the others above, but maybe that's what you are looking for.
Other than the last one mentioned, none of these those are current production, which means you'll have to do some hunting for them. They're not hard to find, but you'll still have to look either on the auction sites, or old stock inventory from dealers.
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