?Opening hopper doors K-line 2 bay hopper?

[Boyd]

I'm looking at a K-line 2 bay hopper on ebay and I'm wondering if there are doors on the bottom that open up? If they do open up, is there an opening behind them where whatever was put into the hopper would empty? If no opening, then I could make my own opening. Do the doors look tough enough to standup to actually being used to haul a load? I could even make my own mechanism to open and close the doors.

[Boyd]

Oops I forgot the ebay auction number is 331020789462.

[brianel027]

Yes Boyd, the hopper doors do open and close and yes, there are openings behind the hatch doors. And yes, the car will certainly hold a load of rubber coal or the Lionel plastic coal. Now for the disclaimer. Check out this other ebay listing as the photo is better and has the zoom function so you can see what I am talking about.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/K-Line-Corning-Covered-Hopper-K-6236-/261280112712?pt=Model_RR_Trains&hash=item3cd5822048#ht_64wt_1077

There are thin grabbers on the side of the black hopper door that snap lock on the main car body. From the photo, you can see these on the side of the hopper hatches. These are somewhat fragile and are prone to breaking, especially with repeated use. The best way to open the hopper doors is to put your hand over the whole car, and to gently pull up on these snap locks on each side of the hopper at the same time. Doing this will help extend the life of this part. As far as an easy way to get the doors to open, I don't know. I've thought about this very thing also.

You will also notice the car RIDES HIGH from the trucks. YES, it is as BAD as this photo shows. K-Line had a plastic nub on the bottom of the frame assembly (which is a separate part, which can be removed when first removing both opening hopper doors - another tricky operation withou breaking the parts).

This plastic nub went inside the plastic trucks on the casrs with plastic trucks, so the space is not nearly as terrible. But on the cdars with die cast trucks, the truck just sits on top of the plastic nubs. YES, you can alter this by grinding down the nubs and then remounting the die cast trucks with a different K-Line screw, or re-drilling out the hole in the trucks to accept a different sized screw.

For your info, the 2-bay hoppers being produced by RMT are from the same exact molds, but RMT has made a couple slight improvements. The RMT cars ride far lower to the trucks... still a tad high, but far better than the previous K-Line ones. Also RMT molds the hopper doors from differing colors to match the color of the train car. K-Line used black molded hopper doors on everything, despite the color of the car body.

Also, K-Line made an operating version of this identical car we are talking about. It worked with a plunger similar to that on the "peek-a-boo" type operating box cars. I had the 7110 Conrail one and was never very happy with the operation of the car. You couldn't fill the car with plastic coal, as there WAS NOT enough pressure on the operating spring doors to keep them closed. Lionel made a couple more of these operating hoppers under the K-Line by Lionel banner. Maybe these worked better than the earlier K-Line ones.