The Slippery Slope of Freight Car Weathering & Hoschton Hoppers

Greetings All,

I'm pleased to report I've continued rolling down the "slippery slope" of freight car weathering without serious injury. Happy with the success of my gondola weathering project I turned my attention to my coal hopper fleet. The purpose again was to achieve a used but not abused look using the rattle can red primer and flat black from the gondola project.

A bonus of the weathering "snowball effect" is that a pair of Hoschton Railway Hoppers have joined the fleet.

The first weathered group of empties roll across the Empire City Viaduct.

The midpoint of the empty hopper train comes thru the west side. I would call this "Fleet Weathering". Individually they are just misted over with the red primer and flat black but in a train they really convey a used empty coal hopper fleet.

The hind end stretches past North Side Yard. Once I started the weathering I included my brown coal hoppers that are seldom seen in the virtual ops. 

Next on the weathering "Slippery Slope" came the 2 bay hoppers.  

All told I pulled out almost all of my coal hoppers and weathered them over a two day period. 

With the rattle can spray paint weathering giving me good results I turned my attention to some ballast hoppers that were pretty shiny despite their dull cote applications.

NYC 950000 looks much better to me. The PRR work train cars belong to my son and if I weathered the yellow car to the left he would have a fit so it remains in the fresh out of the shop look.

While rummaging thru my coal hopper boxes I came across this pair of IHC hoppers that I bought over twenty years ago. 

They had been upgraded with body mounted Kadee #5 couplers and metal wheels during the Coal Hopper Summer of 2017. After that they went back into the box where they sat until this project.

Our late friend 1:1 Engineer Ed loved running the coal trains on the NYCTL and we had plans to add Ed's freelanced Hoschton Railway Company coal hoppers to our layouts to further the enjoyment. Ed had decals made and was in the process of fine tuning them when he passed away. So what better way to honor my coal train running buddy than adding a pair of Hoschton Hoppers to my fleet.

A close up of HR 654117. Engineer Ed made the return empty to HRC West Side Yard yellow box decals on his home computer.

A close up of HR 655078 rolling thru Empire City.

A run thru coal train from the B&O heads towards the Empire Power Authority's Coal Fired Power Plant #3. Ed's Hoschton Railway was located in Georgia and used the slogan "Hoschton Serves the South" so I coupled them into a coal train with other southern railroad hoppers.

On another day empty coal hoppers from the APRR, KP&W and HR roll across the Empire City viaduct towards Hudson Coal.

Here's a short video of an empty coal hopper train heading for Terminal Yard for eventual loading at Hudson Coal.

Fifty empties are ready for Hudson Coal loading! 

The sea of hoppers are totally clogging my rail yard!😊 They need  to be called for loading and shipment to my own E.P.A. Power Plant, R.M.O. Electric (A.P.R.R.) and Kings Port Steel (K.P.D.) !

All told I think this project paid nice dividends. I'm especially pleased with the Hoschton Hoppers and think Ed would have been to.

Thanks for reading!!!

See Ya Soon!!!