I'm sure everyone has come across them and before in some point of time, what I'm wondering is what's the prototype (name/actual date) and what railroads did they use it on?

Most of the searching I've found comes up as just the offset 2 or 3 bay but not on 4 bay

I found about 4 that I had as a kid, and thought I would one day fix them up as a "just for the hell of it" project. I also tried researching the prototype, and discovered they are ARA 70-ton offset quad hoppers built in the late 1920s. I think B&O had a large fleet, but other railroads had them as well.

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For starters, try the paragraphs down near Figure 5-4 in this exerpt from "The model railroader's guide to freight cars" By Jeff Wilson.

... I Googled "railroad four-bay offset side coal hopper."

nachoman Wrote:I found about 4 that I had as a kid, and thought I would one day fix them up as a "just for the hell of it" project. I also tried researching the prototype, and discovered they are ARA 70-ton offset quad hoppers built in the late 1920s. I think B&O had a large fleet, but other railroads had them as well.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://books.google.com/books?id=_8qQS0ZNCTIC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=ara+quad+hoppers+offset&source=bl&ots=8ZIjhYo5tD&sig=5CkcHgvLFvlX3N1BdpCNKEUh0p0&hl=en&ei=5Wd8TPbbEJT2swOHmZS3Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=ara%20quad%20hoppers%20offset&f=false">http://books.google.com/books?id=_8qQS0 ... et&f=false</a><!-- m -->

I completely forgot about that, I had this convo in chat a looooooooooong time ago, thanks for reminding me! I even printed out that section, shhhh hock: But that's as far as I got.

After rereading it and researching the ARA spec I ran into this thread over on atlas with this post

Quote:The B&O had a very large fleet of these, something like 6-7,000 of them I think. The B&M had 1000, the MILW/CTSE had 500, the MKT had 50, and the MoPac had 1500. The C&O had about 3000 similar cars and the Erie had 800 similar cars. All of these cars were built around 1930 and many lasted until the 60s.

Now on the hunt for the Erie photos, if they exist

Whatever info/photos you find, post it here - I could eventually need it.

nachoman Wrote:Whatever info/photos you find, post it here - I could eventually need it.

Will do, think it would benefit or ever inspire others to grabs these if there was a good use for them

So far I've only found 3 bay Eries, which doesn't help at all. Right now I'm looking at the Reading two bay offsets and thinking on trying to cut up one of the 4 bays into a two bay. I wonder how to cut straight....

This is just a test for the two bays, I added a proto photo of the reading hopper to compare. I know the cuts are terrible, but it's not like I have 10 laying around

I have a couple of the Athearn version of that same car - I wasn't too crazy about them as four-bays, so I made mine into three-bay versions:


Wayne

tomustang Wrote:This is just a test for the two bays, I added a proto photo of the reading hopper to compare. I know the cuts are terrible, but it's not like I have 10 laying around

Tom,
Now that Archer Surface Details is offering rivet decal sheets, I think I would remove the riven details at the splices; and smooth the joint to hide it. Then, use a thin strip of styrene with the double row of Archer rivet decals to hide the joints completely.

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I am pretty sure Athearn had a 2-bay offset hopper kit at one time. The only sense in playing around with the Tyco/Bachmann/AHM cars is that they are plentiful and cheap. When I was first introduced to HO trains, a Bachmann Boston Maine car of this type was my favorite, even though it did not run well due to being too light.

Yup.


They also offered them in a composite (wood/steel) offset version, although I don't have any in that style. I do have quite a few of the ribbed-side version, though:


Wayne

The Kings Port & Western has about 15 of those! Yeah, still with horn hook couplers. Its a run-through train so I'm not switching them and having troubles backing them up. I'll get around to converting them eventually!

I have 6, all different brands...looking to add more as they are my Christmas candy train...

I lost track of how many of these I have. At some point I realized just how much work it would be to convert and renumber a fleet of them so I (mostly) stopped collecting them. I was originally collecting them to make a unit train for my high-school home layout which had a loads-in/mt's-out configuration on either side of a backdrop. On one side was a mine, on the other would have been an image of a power plant (but I never got around to finding or printing/attaching one).

I was specifically collecting the VGN version. I'll post pics sometime of the upgrades I did.

Galen