The Purgatory Box Comes Thru Again!

Greetings All,

I could have titled this blog entry "Blame it on Ralph!" Ever since he used the phrase 'nothing says railroading like a coal train' he lit a fire for me to upgrade and expand my own coal hopper fleet. "Ralph" being my friend also known as PC Ralph or Ralph V. to the model railroading world. His Kings Port Division layout blog and his youtube channel RalphPCvids will show you that he knows a thing or two about coal trains and model railroading!

We've mentioned the term "virtual ops catalyst" in the past and this is another one of those projects that should pay big dividends for the P.C.C.M.s. Our last P.C.C.M. was a three layout unit coal train that traveled from the N.Y.C.T.L. to the K.P.D. to 1:1 Sir Neal's A.P.R.R. . We all had a good time with it and I'm looking forward to additional unit coal trains traveling to and from the three layouts. You know it's been said 'there's nothing that says railroading like a coal train'...

Early in this endeavor I was fortunate to find six Stewart brand coal hoppers with three lettered for the NYC and three for NYC subsidiary the P&LE at a swap meet. That was a quick 6! 

Going forward once my freelance Empire Belt Railroad became a reality I wanted to add some black E.B.R.R. coal hoppers 
to my fleet. To accomplish this in a budget friendly way I turned once again to the purgatory box. I knew I had a variety of coal hoppers in a rainbow of colors that no longer saw layout time. Some of them had actually been converted to body mounted Kadees and metal wheels over the years. Most however were not. 

I placed the cars in a container of 91% alcohol to strip them of their paint and lettering. If the paint and lettering stayed on after this then I just painted right over them. They're coal hoppers and the E.B.R.R. could certainly have bought second hand cars.

Here's the latest batch from the N.Y.C.T.L. Paint Shop. The car brands range from AHM, IHC, Bachmann, ConCor and Lionel to name the ones that come to mind. 

Converting the cars to body mounted couplers was a bit time consuming as no two cars required the same work to line up with the Kadee height gauge. But in the end they all do now. 

All told since Ralph uttered that coal train phrase I've been able to paint and letter about 12 cars for the E.B.R.R. Nine of these were from the purgatory box and are now seeing new life. 

Following the E.B.R.R. numbering guide the rib side hoppers are in the 416500 - 416999 sequence and the offset side hoppers are in the 416000 - 416499 sequence.  

6 E.B.R.R. coal hoppers are now at Hudson Coal waiting to be loaded. This string of coal hoppers looks so much better to me than the colorful yellow, orange and red coal cars they once were.

These two gondolas are recently out of the purgatory box as well. The E.B.R.R. car on the left is an old Model Power 'Recycled Steel' gondola that I painted during the coal hopper project. The NYC car is an old Mantua gondola that came with a coal load. Both sat in the box seldom used. For some reason yesterday I finally decided to remove the coal load from NYC gon and place it in regular revenue service. Look for these cars in future blog entries.

In conclusion the project was a big one that took some substantial hobby time. I was able to take a bunch of very colorful older coal hoppers from various manufacturers, some long gone, and reclaim them from an unknown fate. This is one of the aspects about this hobby that I really enjoy. I think I have a few more rainbow hoppers somewhere under the layout so once my rattle can trigger finger is ready I'll start the search for them. Thanks Ralph!

Thanks for reading!!