The Tyco/Bachmann/AHM/Rivarossi 40' Quad hoppers

[tomustang]

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

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