| Only $42.95! (except Christmas Car) |
For daily product status or to order by telephone call: 1-732-441-0555
The early development of covered hoppers grew out of a need to move dry cement in a more cost effective manner. The early awkward and labor-intensive method of movement was via boxcars with 80 pound bags. The solution was a hopper car with a roof added and redesigned bays to handle cement discharge rather than coal (a steeper slope was needed). East coast railroads started experimenting in the early 1930's by putting covers on coal hoppers to move diverse commodities, such as sand, cement, fluorspar and slate.
The covered hopper that SHS is producing is based on the CRR of NJ, 50-ton capacity cement car, produced in 1932, and numbered 65010 through 65099. Other railroads that used converted open top hoppers were Baltimore & Ohio, New York Central, Chesapeake & Ohio, Grand Trunk Western, Nickel Plate, Pennsylvania, Western Maryland, Reading, Delaware Lackawanna & Western, Lehigh Valley, Maine Central, Lehigh & New England and Delaware & Hudson.
The balance of the samples for our new rebuilt covered hoppers arrived on Thursday, April 10. As soon as Don gets back from the TCA show, we will post images of these new samoles. We are still hoping to see the first shipment mid summer.
We've posted the instruction sheet for the new hoppers.
The 2008 Christmas car will be a Maine Central covered hopper with a reindeer peeking out of a hatch. We are of course using Rudy again, so he will have a red blinking nose! The Christmas car is $52.95. There will also be an MEC covered hopper without Rudolph at the normal $42.95 price.
