Dear N Scale Customers:

Bluford Shops is happy to announce our second run of N scale 2-Bay Rebuilt War Emergency Hoppers. These ready-to-run cars feature: die cast slope sheet-hopper bay-center sill assembly; injection molded plastic sides, ends, and hopper doors; fully molded brake tank, valve and air lines; body mounted brake hose detail; load; body mounted magnetically operating knuckle couplers; close coupling; and Fox Valley Models metal wheels.

IMPORTANT: In the past, we have packaged hopper runs such as these as singles, 2-packs and 3-packs for a total of 6 road numbers. Beginning with this announcement we are doing away with the multi-packs and each of the 6 road numbers can now be ordered separately.

Chesapeake & Ohio began rebuilding their fleet of 3,000 War Emergency hoppers in 1952 with the bulk of the fleet converted by the end of 1954. The rebuilding brought a new paint scheme with the stacked name and the first edition of the C&O For Progress logo (in this case, special stencils were made to dodge the diagonal rib.)

 

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Illinois Central rebuilt their 600 War Emergency hoppers with all-steel parts in 1955 and 1956. The rebuilds were performed at the cars birthplace, Illinois Central’s own Centralia Shops. When originally built as composite side cars, IC was painting their hoppers black but that changed after the war with open top cars adopting the same freight car red used on their boxcars. This is the version depicted on this run. IC returned to black for hoppers in the 1960s.

 

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The first of Louisville & Nashville’s 1,000 car fleet of War Emergency hoppers had their wood siding replaced with steel at the railroad’s South Louisville Shops in 1954. L&N renumbered the cars as they were rebuilt from the 31000 series to the 71000 series.  After much of the fleet had been converted in this manner, L&N changed methods and rebuilt the remaining composite hoppers into 8-panel hoppers.

 

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Nickel Plate Road’s composite hoppers were not War Emergency cars at all. NKP was one of a very few roads to order wood sided hoppers in the mid-1920s. They began replacing the slope sheets with steel in the 1930s and the first car rolled out of the shops with new steel sides in 1940 with the last of the converted cars completed 14 years later. The last one was retired in 1972. The paint scheme presented here was first applied in 1945.

 

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The Pennsylvania Railroad began rebuilding their H31B composite hoppers into H31C all-steel cars in 1954. The rebuild program would run for seven years with most of the cars receiving this Shadow Keystone paint scheme.

 

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Central of Georgia rebuilt their entire fleet of War Emergency hoppers between 1951 and 1952. They rolled out of the shops in new freight car red paint (replacing the black used on the composite version) and new lettering. Aside from a few cars damaged in wrecks, the fleet was intact when Southern Railway bought control of the CoG in 1963 with many cars remaining in service well into the ‘70s.

 

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These Southern Railway “permanently coupled” pairs of hoppers were an effort by Southern to provide lower rates to customers while not running afoul of the Interstate Commerce Commission. At the time these pairs were conceived in the early ‘60s, the ICC prevented railroads from giving a price break for loading two 50 ton cars to match the allowed price for a single 100 ton car. This was particularly unfair to small customers located on lightly built branch lines. Southern’s response was to make two cars into one by permanently coupling them and assigning the pair a single road number. Permanence was achieved by removing the cut levers on the adjoining ends. The exact number of pairs made from these rebuilt War Emergency hoppers is a mystery because Southern also paired up some 6-panel hoppers and scattered them through the same number series with no distinction between them in the Equipment Register. However, other documentary evidence suggests there were more than 325 of these rebuilt War Emergency pairs. Each package includes both cars of the pair.

 

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We will also be running Undecorated cars on this body style again. These are fully assembled and unpainted. Expect the trucks, couplers and load to be molded in black. The hopper bays/slope sheets will be unpainted metal and the remainder in unpainted plastic (probably gray but subject to change.) We don't generally run a lot of extra Undecs so if you are interested, please pre-order them.

 

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Order Due Date: Due Now

Anticipated Delivery Date: December 2020

 

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