ACF Center Flow 2-Bay Hoppers

[jstaworski]

To All Members -

Hi - - - I'm new at this Forum thing, so I ask your indulgence with me I'm going to ask a couple of questions - and I'm sure they have been covered in the past.

The grandkids live in Winchester, VA. So for their birthdays, I was planning on building each of them an InterMountain ACF 2-Bay Covered Hopper in "Winchester and Western" livery. I've already purchased 6 sets of Oddball decals for the W & W.

My questions are this:

1. Does anyone know the color of the hoppers? What I've seen in color photos, the ACF cars seem to be pretty much painted in the same color gray. I've modeled Navy jets, and the gray color seems to be close to Light Gull Gray.
I would appreciate either the exact color - or the closest "match."

2. On bothe ends of the InterMountain kit, there are round openings. Should they be there? Should I blank them off? And what are they? I called InterMountain, and the man I talked with wasn't sure as to what the holes are, but he said they should be there.

Any help on the above questions would be deeply and greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your patience with me.

John

[ericsp]

The openings should be there. I am guessing these are the round holes on the vertical part of the end sheets. In the real Center-flow hoppers, the sloped portion of the end sheets continues behind the vertical part all the way to the bay.

I do occasionally see these hoppers. However, off hand I do not remember their exact color.

[davekelly]

[#welcome]
I've found that if a color is close is probably is good to go. Sunlight, cleanings, fading, dirt, grime, dust, different paint lots, different paint manufacturers etc all work to make the different examples of supposedly the same color - well, different.

[jstaworski]

Thank you for the information, Eric and Dave. And I deeply thank you for making me feel welcome - and not "dumb" by asking questions that probably have already been asked.

Sincerely,

John

[brazos87]

99 percent of the time, there really aren't any dumb questions, but sometimes there can be really dumb answers. Both of the replies to your question are dead on good answers, welcome to the forums!!![:D] Keep the questions coming, most folks here are happy to help.

[ahuffman]

The W&W covered hoppers I've seen were painted a light cream color rather than the more common shades of gray seen on many covered hoppers. There are quite a few photos of them on the "Fallen Flags" web-site. http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/ww/ww.html will get you to the Winchester & Western portion of the web-site and then scroll down and look under Freight Equipment for car numbers prefixed by LO (AAR code for covered hoppers). I think the cars you want to model are in the 7000 series numbers.