Penn Central Covered Hopper # 886759

Greetings Blog Followers,

This past week a new American Car & Foundry 3 Bay Center-Flow Covered Hopper was added to the freight car roster. I did some research on the prototype and before we get to the pictures let's take a quick look at what the car is and what it does.

ACF 3 BAY CENTER FLOW COVERED HOPPER: The car was designed and built in the mid 1960's to carry grain or grain type loads. An extremely popular car that boasts a 4,650 cubic foot capacity and ACF built over 15,000 units. These cars have a Plate C clearance. ACF also introduced a 4,600 cubic foot capacity car that was lower and longer and met the tighter Plate B restrictions.

THE MODEL: The model 3 Bay Center Flow Covered Hopper is an Accurail 2000 series kit. The kit is easy to build and includes everything needed to get the car rolling. Accurail provides dummy knuckle couplers as well as Accumate knuckle couplers and plastic wheels. Accurail has upgraded the kits by adding screws to secure the coupler lids and trucks. This eliminates the former push pin coupler boxes lids that were prone to drooping and adds better truck control.

Accurail Item # 2100 Penn Central 3 Bay Covered Hopper kit Made in the USA 

is built and ready for service. 

Note the screws holding the coupler box lids in place.

The car has been upgraded with Intermountain metal wheels and Kadee #5 Couplers 

A nice idea by Accurail is the renumbering decals for this and other models. By sending in the $4.00 you get a small sheet of numbers for this specific car and paint scheme that can be used to expand your fleet. I have used the numbering decals on some NYC equipment and they worked very well.

It didn't take long as PC 886759 is the lead hopper on this grain train. 

PC 886759 with older brother NYC 892086 on the move through Industry City

3 custom painted Athearn BB Penn Central EMD Engines lead a grain train made up of Accurail kits. 

 CB&Q,  PRR,  NYC,  PC and three growling diesels!