This site has a nice side-on shot of the model, and you cna see the hardware details where the doors on the sides swing up to load it:
http://cwrailman.com/FRL/Phosphate/Phosphate1.htm
Also Googling for "hopper bottom phosphate car" brings up a couple of samples of Railway Age from the 1920's which has a blurb mentioning the ACL aquiring these cars. Neat!
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I bit of Google research came up with this rather specialized website
http://www.cargohandbook.com/index.php/Phosphates_and_Superphosphates
which makes clear that, yes, phosphate is a rock or ore when mined and then becomes granular when processed for actual commercial use. It becomes hardened when moist which explains the need for a specialized shipment method: a covered hopper without roof hatches. Exactly how the cars were loaded I cannot say but after reading this I suspect that keeping the product dry was paramount, so perhaps it was loaded indoors.
I have some distant memory of an article in MR about phosphate as a load.
Dave Nelson
Wekk, I'm totally impressed !! After 40+ years my memory is jogged and and yes, that is the exact car kit I bought back in the 70's. I want to heap thanks on you guys for helping this old fart out. I had in the back of my mind it was a phosphate car but that was just a fading memory.
Anyway, this whole thing begs another question. I remember a year or so ago that Trains magazine had an article about Bone Valley in Florida, which is a phosphate operation. All that rock was transported in hoppers, not in a covered hopper with side doors. Did this car haul processed phosphate? How was it loaded? It seems like this configuration would be for some sort of a blow pipe deal for powder. Is this even close? Anyone know?
Take a look here on this site dedicated to Ambroid kits. There's a picture (click on it to enlarge) of the phosphate car you can check.
Enjoy
Paul
The wonderful "HO Seeker" website has instruction sheets for many of the old Ambroid kits - just check Ambroid under Literature.
What you describe might be the covered hopper used for carrying phosphate. Take a look at the instructions on this link:
http://hoseeker.net/ambroid/ambroidphosphatehopper.jpg
Back in the early 70's I purchased and built an Ambroid car kit of a non-standard design. It's a covered hopper with standard sloped ends like a hopper, but with 6 bottom unloading hatches and 8 loading doors, 4 on each side of the car just under the eaves. There are no roof hatches at all. What kind of lading was carried in this car is beyond me as I've never seen nor heard of such a configuration. Anyone have any idea what this car was for?