Offset side 70 ton 3-bay hoppers first appeared in the late 1920s but by the late 30s they had evolved into the AAR standard design seen here. They were built in large quantities by many builders until the mid-1960s. Many remained in service into the 1990s.

  Norfolk & Western experienced a major expansion in 1964 with the acquisition of the Nickel Plate Road, Wabash, and Pittsburgh & West Virginia (the NKP was merged and the other two leased.) Ironically, they didn’t have a direct connection with any of them! That required purchasing a line from Columbus to Sandusky, Ohio from the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Nickel Plate had inherited coal rich lines from Wheeling & Lake Erie along with a sizeable fleet of these hoppers. As these cars came due for service after the merger in ‘64, they were repainted into this paint scheme and pressed into serviceacross the system and via connections.

Features: 

► Friction bearing or roller bearing trucks as appropriate for each road name
► Fully molded air tank and valve with piping, slope sheet braces
► Body mounted brake hose detail
► Separate brake cylinder, rod and lever detail (a first on an N scale open hopper!)
► Body mounted magnetically operating couplers
► Coal load
► Diecast slope sheets and center sill
   and injection molded plastic sides, ends and hopper doors

All runs will be available in multiple road numbers (a single and one of each of the multi-packs gives you one of each road number available.)

Reserve Before February 25,2011 

 Delivery Expected June 2011