Many might remember Life Like's 40' gondola offering of the early 1970s. Included with the car were two lift out containers of a hopper configuration. These little models also included operable hatches and a degree of piping at the hopper bins.
I am curious if anyone knows if there was a prototype for this item. Mine are lettered Missouri Pacific. Lots of effort went into this container for there not to be any inspiration for! Thanks.
Jim Norton
Huntsville, AL
There were prototypes for those containers; they were like a big tote box or sack for granular materials - some kind of mineral product, I think.
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
Cement and lime were shipped in containers like that.
Are you talking about these Lifelike Container gondolas?
Union Carbide used to ship something in similar looking containers. The outlets look like those on plastic pellet hopper cars.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsPicture.aspx?road=RAIX&cid=3
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
Thanks for the information. Lehigh Valley hauled lots of cement in round containers aboard gondolas. Seemed to be a leader in this type of thing. But, nothing close looking to Life Like's containers. Since mine are labeled Missouri Pacific I will look for some equiment info there. Maybe these are indeed an MP design.
Looked in Patrick Dorin's Missouri Pacific book published by TLC. Pretty nice amount of freight car photos in there and some with container bins. But nothing hopper wise like the Life Like example. Is the prototype of this interesting hopper container lost to history?