Was it Athearn that made four bay hoppers with operating doors ?
I had one in my collection years ago but can't for the life of me remember.
Mine always hung up on frogs. Which is why it's not in my collection anymore.
Patrick
Fear an Ignorant Man more than a Lion- Turkish proverb
Modeling an ficticious HO scale intergrated Scrap Yard & Steel Mill Melt Shop.
Southland Industrial Railway or S.I.R for short. Enterchanging with Norfolk Southern.
Patrick,
How long ago? Was it a covered hopper? I just went on eBay and entered "HO scale 4 bay hopper" and a wad of stuff came up. I'd bet that you could juggle your search words a tad and find even more. One of them might look familiar. From that, add in the car number either at eBay or perhaps Google and chances are good you'll find what you want.
Good luck!
John
Athearn BB made one. I glued the doors shut on the ones I had:
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/247650/2762300.aspx
Take Care!
Frank
The offset side Boston and Maine triple hopper is a Bowser product. Athearn's quads with opening doors first came out as Lehigh Valley (boxcar red) Elgin, Joliet, and Eastern and B&O, in black as well as a B&M car that was almost purple. Since then, almost everybody that produced a hunk of plastic to roll on flanged wheels has included a knockoff in their line.
I recently assembled a couple of Athearn blue box 4 bay cars. I had to glue the doors closed when I assembled them.
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I don't know if they were intended to operate or not. They would hang open, but not stay closed. That is why I ended up gluing them.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I had a couple of those hoppers, and also glued the doors shut. Later, I decided to turn them into three-bay cars, and lettered them for my freelanced road...
Wayne
Did AHM make one i had two i got at Woolco's in the 70's think they were AHM.
Russell
Not sure about AHM, but I think that Tyco had ones similar to the Athearn ones, with the hopper doors part of the body casting, rather than separate pieces.
Had the Tyco's also but the two had open hopper doors.
I found this neat picture showing the bottom of the neatest operating HO hopper ever (the Ulrich triple):
What was so great was that the operating mechanism was (mostly) completely hidden. All three doors were connected with a linkage hidden inside the hollow centersill. You can see the rusty spring to the left of the hopper door. And, at the bottom of that door, is the tab that opened the three doors when it encountered a raised pin, coming from the left.
The UN-neat thing about the car is that I think it leaked load, which the old Tyco tended not to.
Ed
Thank you all for the great info.
Yes, AHM did market talgo trucked clones of the Athearn car in the early 1960s. Road names included Kansas, Oklahoma and Gulf, and Pennsylvania RR in black, and SOO in oxide red, and, the hopper doors were molded closed. Woolco stores, which were affiliated with F.W. Woolworth used to sell these cars in an unmarked cardboard enclosures like a box without a lid for 79-99 cents each.