1) Walthers FP7. One reason some railroads bought these engines was that they faced a tremendous seasonal volume of traffic - passenger, mail and express - around the holidays, say Nov 1 to Jan 30. They could buy E units and tie up scarce capital in locomotives not used most of the year or buy freight locomotives with steam generators and high speed gearing that could pitch in on the seasonal rush, but haul money-making freight the rest of the year. That's the reason the PRR - which a huge seasonal volume - had 40 of the breed. Unfortunately, the release of the Walthers model shown in MR doesn't have the distinctive PRR "barrel tank" between the front truck and fuel tank, although earlier releases did. The review says the models will have prototype specific detail, so maybe the PRR version announced as part of the release does include that detail
2) Half empty hopper cars. Another such use of compartmented hoppers was to haul different sizes of coal from one mine to one consignee - not every dealer could take or needed 55 tons of one size. Presumably the waybill stated what end (A or B - the end with the brakewheel) had what size. The CNJ painted a white stripe on the center side strake to designate such cars (I would think the OER had that specified also, but its a lot easier to have it maked on the car)
Anthracite coal used for home heating purposes is uniformly sized to the following dimensions. The different sizes are used in different applications. The larger sizes consisting of stove, chestnut and pea are typically used in hand fired applications. Smaller sizes like rice, buckwheat and barley are typically used in automatic stokers where the coal is mechanically fed.
The compartmented hopper must have been a CNJ thing because I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere in the documentation on RDG and PRR hoppers.
It would also be a bear to load since you would have to run it under the tipple twice, once on the track for one size and once on the track for the other size.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
BEAUSABREUnfortunately, the release of the Walthers model shown in MR doesn't have the distinctive PRR "barrel tank" between the front truck and fuel tank, although earlier releases did.
Mine does:
PRR_9854_FP7 by Edmund, on Flickr
It is from the most recent run.
Thank you, Ed
You might want to revisit and revise the title of your posting. 2001?
Years ago when the online archive was new I had a long series of postings called the Book Club each of which would summarize and invite comment on articles, ads, covers, or any other feature of one particular old issue of MR. December 2001 would indeed be eligible!
Dave Nelson
BEAUSABRE2) Half empty hopper cars. Another such use of compartmented hoppers was to haul different sizes of coal from one mine to one consignee - not every dealer could take or needed 55 tons of one size. Presumably the waybill stated what end (A or B - the end with the brakewheel) had what size. The CNJ painted a white stripe on the center side strake to designate such cars (I would think the OER had that specified also, but its a lot easier to have it maked on the car)
Wouldn't that really mess up the center of gravity on a car to be half empty like that? I could see a car loaded half and half but completely dumped into two adjacent bins at the coal dealer at the same time?
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
Here is an inside view of a 6-compartment hopper (nominal built date 1977).
Note that the transverse partitions do not come up as high as the center slope sheets. I would not be surprised to find this being so to limit transverse differential as in zug's concern.
The car is indicated as built to 283K standard.