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Tuesday, August 29, 2017

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!!

10 comments:

  1. Nice work on the coal cars! I see that Ralph has really pushed the envelope on us to get into the coal business. The A.P.R.R. will always take deliveries from both KP&W as well as the E.B.R.R. for use at R.M.O. Electrics power plant.

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    1. Thanks 1:1 Sir Neal! He sure has! Hudson Coal is working 24-7 to meet the demands of the R.M.O. Electric Plant!

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  2. This keeps reminding me of the coal unit trains that ran and partly still run on D&H-B&M to Mass and NH power plants. These brought coal from mines on the Monongahela Ry, part owned by P&LE. In the 1970s-80s P&LE GP38s were common run-through power on these trains.

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    1. I'm not as up on the trains you mention as I should be. Definitely worth exploring. Thanks for the info.

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  3. Really nice looking hopper fleet. Bringing something out of the Purgatory box and giving it a new life is one of my favorite aspects of the hobby. The rainbow fleet rides again in some new colors! Your gondolas look sharp as well!

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    1. Thanks 1:1 ATJOE! You've been known to give new life to many a car as well!

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  4. John,
    That's excellent! Terrific additions to your fleet of hoppers. Black cars for those black diamonds. That's the way I remember railroading, courtesy of the Penn Central while growing up in NY. Your photos of the long strings of cars do indeed say "railroading"! Very happy to be part of the "virtual ops catalyst", which works both ways, thank you very much!! Neat looking EBRR gon! Say, what are you using for a load in the NYC gon next to it? Looks very convincing as wire or rusting fencing.

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    1. Hi Ralph, Thanks for the compliments and thanks so much for the inspiration! The gondola load is window screen rolled, banded and sprayed with a shot of rust colored primer.

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  5. I agree 200% with Ralph that "nothing says trains like coal". The NYCTL Paint Shops must be operating 7x24 to paint this many cars. They all look awesome and will be very entertaining to see in the VO sessions. At this rate the Empire Belt will have a substantial presence on the NYCTL rails.

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    1. Thanks 1:1 Engineer Ed! Sometimes it felt like I was working on these cars 24/7! The E.B.R.R. has gotten it's foot in the door with supplying coal hoppers to Hudson Coal. We'll put them thru the paces on our next actual ops!

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