Was it the many type of coal hoppers, passenger cars, etc? Futhermore, I already have a mix of PRR hoppers (early and late lettering), numbering about 10, I plan to have the Cornerstone coal mine on my future layout, as well as a power plant, a coal bridge, and a coaling tower. So the question is, what would be a realistic amount of hoppers for a western Pennsylvania set HOscale layout?
(My Model Railroad, My Rules)
These are the opinions of an under 35 , from the east end of, and modeling, the same section of the Wheeling and Lake Erie railway. As well as a freelanced road (Austinville and Dynamite City railroad).
Jimmy,
That depends on what year you are talking about. A quick review of a 1959 ORER gives the following rough totals:
66,000 - Box Cars
38,000 - Gondolas
15,000 - Hoppers
2,700 - Flat Cars
531 - Stock Cars
I would have guessed that Hoppers were the king, but it appears that Box Cars of all types hold the record.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
jrbernier I would have guessed that Hoppers were the king, but it appears that Box Cars of all types hold the record.
And a lot of those 15,000 hoppers was used in stone and coke service but,still that's leaves a lot of hoppers for coal use.
Doesn't say but,I wonder if PRR's ore jennies are counted as "hoppers"?
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Larry,
My 1959 ORER does not list any HMA ore cars for the PRR, something like that could have come later....and my 1951 ORER does not show any short hoppers in the 22'-24' range as well. Were the PRR 'jennies' rotary dumped gondolas?
It all depends on the area modeled. If yor modeling a coal branch then hoppers will be king. If your modeling the mainline or part of the panhandle then box cars would dominate with passenger trains running the outside mains. Around the industrial areas of say Pittsburgh then some mill gons, flats, and house cars (PRR speak for box car) with coke and coal tossed in too.
Having 10 hoppers is not too many for a road that had over 20 thousand hoppers of one class. I run trains at the club with 80 to 100 hoppers. I still have more house cars than hoppers though.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
Jim,According to Keystone PRR used regular hopper cars until 1960 then the ore jennies..
http://pennsyrr.com/modeling/86-modeling/201-iron-ore-traffic
Other then in model form or in photos I never seen a ore car.
[quote user="jrbernier"]
locoi1sa It all depends on the area modeled. If yor modeling a coal branch then hoppers will be king. If your modeling the mainline or part of the panhandle then box cars would dominate with passenger trains running the outside mains. Around the industrial areas of say Pittsburgh then some mill gons, flats, and house cars (PRR speak for box car) with coke and coal tossed in too. Having 10 hoppers is not too many for a road that had over 20 thousand hoppers of one class. I run trains at the club with 80 to 100 hoppers. I still have more house cars than hoppers though. Pete
I'm still working on getting more Bowser kits as we speak. Yes I plan to model a freelanced portion of the PRR on a coal Branch, that also includes what I posted in the original post.
Jimmy,This may help you in some way.
http://www.byz.org/~morven/Railway32/freight/hoppers/index.html
Bad orders.
Charlie
When coal transitioned from mostly bottom dump to mostly rotary dump, the cars used transitioned from hoppers to gons. Note that gons outnumbered hoppers 2:1 in 1959. They weren't all used for coal, but a lot of them were.
Also, after WWII coal use declined. A lot of coal was replaced by #2 fuel oil when railroads shifted from steam to diesel motive power.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with bottom-dump hoppers)
charlie9 Bad orders. Charlie
That was PRR's true state of affairs..Lots of deferred maintenance.
BRAKIE Jimmy,This may help you in some way. http://www.byz.org/~morven/Railway32/freight/hoppers/index.html
THANK YOU! That also helped decide on the paint scheme I need to focus on, the "Shadow".
b60bp Something sounds a little out of whack here. 15,000 hoppers on the Pennsy in the 1959 ?
Mr. Bernier is, indeed, incorrect. In my copy of the January 1959 ORER, there are 92 entries for self-clearing hoppers.
Those entries add up to 55,297.
Ed
Having followed some of your earlier postings, I conclude that you're modeling the period from about 1945 to about 1955. During that period, most PRR freight cars were "freight car color" red (i. e., NOT tuscan), and they carried the classic ball lettering that had been introduced in the late 1920's. More modern schemes such as the shadow keystone began to appear about 1954, at the very end of your modeling period. It took quite a while to repaint the entire fleet, so a lot of PRR cars were still carrying the ball herald in the 1960's. The ball herald is your best bet.
Hoppers for use in large-volume service like power generating stations tended to be of higher capacity, like 70 tons. So shipments to your power plant would most likely be in H21a 4-bay hoppers. The H21's with clamshells were all gone or nearly all gone by the end ot the 1940's. H22's and H22a's were also gone or nearly gone. Smaller two-bay GLa hoppers were also very common, many of them carrying smaller capacity loads to smaller home-heat coal dealers. Bowser can fill most of your needs for hoppers, and a few interchange cars like a B&O W-2A (Athearn) four-bay 70-tonnerr would look right at home. B&O began to repaint these from the "13 Great States" scheme to the "Big B&O" scheme around 1954.
The very most common PRR boxcar of the day was the X29, and the above comments about lettering schemes apply to these as well. Gs gondolas were still running in staggering numbers.
If I were to build a roster of 12 cars for your specific needs, I would probably make it 4 H21a's; 3 GLa's; 3 X29's; and 2 Gs'. A round roof X31 boxcar and an H30 covered hopper might be nice additions for variety. I'd probably specify the ball keystone scheme for everything. I know you like your Duplexes, and they were all going to scrap when the shadow keystone started to appear. Bowser can provide all of these except the X29's.
HOWEVER, as you've said before, it's your railroad so you can do as you wish. (These are the comments of a 68 year old guy who was there to see it).
One more thing: Boxcars tended to range far from home rails. Hoppers tended to stay fairly close to home. For example, it would be rare (although not unheard of) to find a PRR hopper car on the west coast. So even though PRR may have owned more boxcars, many of those boxcars were far from home rails at any given time, so the numbers that you would see at any given time may be different from the numbers owned. Lots of foreign road boxcars would be present, but few hoppers from the N.P., for example.
Ed,
I rechecked my 'math' - This is from an Oct 1959 ORER. I 'rounded' my numbers with some quick addition for that original number. After reviewing the ORER and looking for ALL HM & HT self clearing hoppers, I come up with 51,288. For some strange reason, the PRR does not show a 'recapitulation' of type H cars - Strange! They do show a 'move forward' of ALL type F, G, and H type cars and that total is 64,587. Sorry for not finding the Hoppers buried in the type GB cars a couple of pagers earlier. The bottom line for the OP was what was the most common car on the PRR - It was a Box Car(over 66,000 examples).
Something to remember that the "G" series hoppers were actually classified as gondolas, hence G. The H21 has a "H" since it is classified as a hopper. One must be careful when wading through the ORER, since it will give you an inaccurate number based of the Pennsy non standard classifaction system.
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PJM20 Something to remember that the "G" series hoppers were actually classified as gondolas, hence G. The H21 has a "H" since it is classified as a hopper. One must be careful when wading through the ORER, since it will give you an inaccurate number based of the Pennsy non standard classifaction system.
That is why I used the term "self-clearing hopper"s, as also used in the ORER. Of the 55,297 of the former, 19,169 were of the G classification, rather than H. Not knowing much about the Pennsy, I thought, at first, that they might be drop-bottom gons. The GN and NP had many of these, so the possibility existed. Then I found pictures. Yup, pretty much your basic hopper car.
ACY Having followed some of your earlier postings, I conclude that you're modeling the period from about 1945 to about 1955. During that period, most PRR freight cars were "freight car color" red (i. e., NOT tuscan), and they carried the classic ball lettering that had been introduced in the late 1920's. More modern schemes such as the shadow keystone began to appear about 1954, at the very end of your modeling period. It took quite a while to repaint the entire fleet, so a lot of PRR cars were still carrying the ball herald in the 1960's. The ball herald is your best bet. Hoppers for use in large-volume service like power generating stations tended to be of higher capacity, like 70 tons. So shipments to your power plant would most likely be in H21a 4-bay hoppers. The H21's with clamshells were all gone or nearly all gone by the end ot the 1940's. H22's and H22a's were also gone or nearly gone. Smaller two-bay GLa hoppers were also very common, many of them carrying smaller capacity loads to smaller home-heat coal dealers. Bowser can fill most of your needs for hoppers, and a few interchange cars like a B&O W-2A (Athearn) four-bay 70-tonnerr would look right at home. B&O began to repaint these from the "13 Great States" scheme to the "Big B&O" scheme around 1954. The very most common PRR boxcar of the day was the X29, and the above comments about lettering schemes apply to these as well. Gs gondolas were still running in staggering numbers. If I were to build a roster of 12 cars for your specific needs, I would probably make it 4 H21a's; 3 GLa's; 3 X29's; and 2 Gs'. A round roof X31 boxcar and an H30 covered hopper might be nice additions for variety. I'd probably specify the ball keystone scheme for everything. I know you like your Duplexes, and they were all going to scrap when the shadow keystone started to appear. Bowser can provide all of these except the X29's. HOWEVER, as you've said before, it's your railroad so you can do as you wish. (These are the comments of a 68 year old guy who was there to see it).
Earlier I said the most common car was the bad order, but upon further reflection, it may have been the "no bill".
Regarding the PRR's use of the "G" classification for hoppers, the history of that is simply the fact that gondolas were the accepted car to use in transporting coal before the development of the self-clearing hopper car with its characteristic slope sheets and bottom doors. The self-clearing hopper came into use right around 1900 or so. Prior to that, gondolas were generally unloaded by clamshells in the most efficient locations, and by strong men with shovels in less efficient ones. Some gons were built with drop-bottom doors. When PRR purchased several versions of wooden drop-bottom hopper, and later added the GL series of steel twin hopper, the typical thinking was that these were just another improved version of a "coal car", and ought to be thought of as being in the same general class. So they were class "G-something-or-other". Eventually the utility of the self-clearing steel hopper dawned on almost everybody throughout the industry, and PRR (along with everybody else) began to think of hoppers for one purpose and gondolas for another. That's when PRR started to use H as the class letter for hoppers. The GL series was pretty well established, and there were many thousands of them. It didn't make much sense to reclass them all, so they kept their original classes (sometimes with new subclass letters to reflect improvements) until the end. Many years later, in the 1940's and 1950's, coal was still shipped in gondolas now and then, but that business was mostly in the hands of hopper cars. Out west, the Utah coal route, U.P., and others continued to use gondolas in coal service, although they were generally built with some sort of dumping feature (side dump, etc.).
As this question was asked, about ore jennies. The PRR used their GLca Twin Hoppers to load ore from the Lake Erie ports down to the steel plants in the Pittsburgh area, then load them with coal to go back to the Lake Erie ports for shipment by boat to the upper Great Lakes. The G38 and G39 Ore Jennies were specially purchased/made for the iron ore being brought in from Brazil and was shipped from Philadelphia to the Bethlehem Steel plants in Bethlehem, PA. Now on the GLca Twin Hoppers, each car got a small pile or ore over each truck as they would tare out before they would cube out, if the car was filled with ore, the frame would break as they could not take the weight.
Another peculiarty of the PRR was their Covered Hoppers were also in the H class with the Open Hopper cars, so H21, H22, H25, H35, H36, H37, H39 and H43 were Open Hoppers and H30, H32, H33, H34, H40, H42, H45, H49 and H50 were all Covered Hoppers. Missing numbers in the sequence were mostly single experimental cars of both types.
Rick J
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I was also figuring to get some more pennsy coaches, so I could model a commuter train. Also so I could model a long distance Pennsy HW train.
For ACCURATE commuter coaches, P54's or P70's are probably the best choice, and a G5s ten-wheeler would be the most likely steam engine for that service. P54's were produced in the recent past by Con Cor (?) I believe. P70's have been available from Bachmann and others. Nobody currently manufactures a G5s, but you might find one on the used market.
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't the K4s class end their days on commuter service as well?
Yes, mostly in New Jersey. In the Pittsburgh area, K4s' may have been used in commuter service, but G5s' were more the norm.
Did the Pennsylvania use stainless steel 64 seat coaches?
Amtrak America, 1971-Present.
angelob6660 Did the Pennsylvania use stainless steel 64 seat coaches?
I'm assuming you mean the PS 64 seat coaches offered by Walthers, the answer is yes. PRR acquired some from the NYC in the early 1960s. The PRR also acquired Budd sleeping cars from the N&W, which were converted to coaches, and snack bar coaches.