This week I was finally able to get some Dull Coat sprayed on some recent work. Amazing how wet is has been around here when I have had time to work on these cars.
Remember that car that followed me home from the Strasburg Show? well it has been taking a bath.
The Black and the decals came off quickly. But there was a layer of red primer on this cars that was rather stubborn.
But it slowly coming off. The car is cleaning up nicely.
On the possibility of finding an elusive Locomotive Workshop CNJ Double Ender Kit that I mentioned before. The gentleman has located the kit, put a price on it and has agreed to sell it. He wants to hand deliver the kit to me at an upcoming show. I can do that. One step closer.
Last week, I finished up ten pairs of Intermountain Trucks with Protocraft Wheelsets installed. Well, I had to find some models to place them under. So, I dug out some Lionel offset twins I’ve been working on.
I had four of the twins that I had mounted couplers and installed PSC bolsters on a number of years ago. I forget what they were decorated from the factory, that lettering was removed long ago and they were painted black on their way to become something new. About a month ago, I used CDS dry transfers to decorate three of the cars for Leigh & New England. This fourth car was still waiting.
You can see from this view. These were not extensivly rebuilt from their 3-rail origins. The center sill is drilled and tapped so that a Kadee coupler could be installed. The 3-rail bolster was ground flat and a Precision Scale bolster glued onto the car. I’ve done about a dozen cars in this way, but I’m looking into doing a different type of conversion the next time. One which rebuilds the bolster sheet into something a little more prototypically accurate.
I was going to just mount the trucks on the cars, but the couplers needed to be changed out and checked against the gauge.
I was thinking of just using the last set of transfers I had for the LNE on this car but I do have a love/hate relationship with dry transfers. I love they way they look on a car. We won’t talk about applying transfers to ribbed cars. That is one experience I can live without ever again.
I really wasn’t looking forward to doing another car with the CDS set. The transfers are getting old and one of the sets I used wasn’t sealed properly. It really gave me a hard time applying them to the car.
As I looked closer on the cars I thought were done, I still had the ends to do on two of the cars. So they still needed a little work in addition to the truck installation.
I had picked up a set of decals from K4 Decals with the thoughts that I might be able to use some of the little bits to complete the cars lettered with the transfers. I thought it might be a good time to try out to letter the fourth car.
I started applying the decals and I really wasn’t happy. The logo was thin and oversize compared to the car lettered with the CDS transfers on top. The reporting marks were a different font even though they were the same scheme. It reminded me of using a set of Champ decals.
Nope, they had to go. Back to the black car.
I thought about using the last set of CDS transfers I had on the car. Instead, I decided to used a set of decals from the same company for the San Serif scheme. The logo was smaller than the first set, closer in size to the CDS logo. And since the other three are done in the Roman scheme any problem with the decal lettering won’t stand out as much.
That looks better.
I finished up the lettering on the ends of the other cars also. I needed to change the numbers around and it’s a struggle to do that while looking through the transfer sheet.
I burnished the numbers onto a blank section of the decals. Then I could just apply them like decals on the ends of the cars and change the number sequence as I needed to.
Since the cars were sitting on the workbench and my order for the air hoses from Hi-tech Details came in. I thought I’d instal them next.
They are very simple to install. The bracket mounts onto the end sill and the air line feeds through the opening on the bracket. I usually just tie the air line into the cars air line by just glueing them onto the side of the existing air line.
Two cars completed, two more to go.
Here are the four car with the air hoses installed. They have been touch-up with a little bit of Vallejo Model Color Glossy Black 70.861. Their lettering is a combination of decals and transfers. Next up for these cars is to install the uncoupling levers, overspray the decals with Dull Coat and then it’s time to weather the cars.
Prototype History The H21 was originally designed as a 50 ton coke car. Construction of new H21 cars ran from 1909 through 1914. They were built by Altoona Car shops, Pressed Steel Car Co., Cambria Steel Co., American Car & Foundry, and Standard Steel Car Co.
A total of 21,738 car were built as the 50 ton H21 car class. It did not take long for the railroad to see that these cars had the capacity to hold 70 tons of coal. Lines West began converting the class into H21a’s in 1911. In 1912 the railroad began producing H22’s for coke service and converting the H21’s to handle coal. All H21’s would be converted to H21a by 1925. The conversion was basically placing 70 ton Crown trucks under the cars.
From 1915-1918 the railroad built an additional 14,270 H21a cars. The builders of the new cars were the same as for the H21’s with the addition of Ralston Steel Car Co. The railroad began to see that the frames were not able to hold up to the 70 ton coal loading. They began adding the reinforcement angle on the top sill from bolster to bolster starting in 1919. A corner to corner strengthened bulb angle would start appearing in the ’30’s but would not result in a class change. Nor would the conversion from original style “clamshell” hopper to “sawtooth” hoppers result in a class change.
The H21b class was created in 1930 when the railroad started a program to upgrade 100 cars with a 12 inch ARA center sill. This program was again done in 1943 to bring the total of H21b’s to 198. Externally there were no visible features to distingush the class besides the class stencil.
The H21d was a one-of-a-kind car conversition into a covered hopper car. While the H21d looks neat, I do not like to model one car classes. As I’ve pointed out before, most likely you would not have ever seen the car standing trackside in real life.
The class H21e first appeard in August of 1947 and reached a peak of 8,546 cars by January of 1953. The rebuild included adding a power hand brake and internal crossridge stakes. The power brakes had been applied to some H21a class cars without resulting in a class change. These H21a’s retained their internal cross ties at stakes 2, 4, 6, and 8. Some H21e car would have their side stakes welded on instead of the normal riveted side stakes.
In 1953 the PRR rostered 37173 class H21 hoppers. The OER did not fully split out the subclasses of “a”, “b” or “e.” Here are some fleet totals for the H21 class from 1952-1958 OER’s and the percentage that number represented to the total PRR open hopper fleet.
1952: 39702 cars 49.5% of the total PRR open hopper fleet
1953: 37173 cars 50.2% of the total PRR open hopper fleet
1956: 30737 cars 53.2% of the total PRR open hopper fleet
1958: 28020 cars 47.8% of the total PRR open hopper fleet
The PRR Steel Hopper book lists the following for class breakdowns for July of 1953: 35,256 total cars, 26576 H21a, 170 H21b, 1 H21d, 8509 h21e.
Cars of later subclasses are after my modeling time of 1952. I’ll let someone else talk about those classes.
References: Keystone Article PRR Steel Open Hopper Cars – John Teichmoeller January 1952 Official Railway Equipment Register September 1953 Official Railway Equipment Register April 1956 Official Railway Equipment Register
Modeling the H21’s in Proto48 In O scale we have been blessed with nice brass examples of the H21’s over the years. Some are clearly better, more accurate, or have finer details than others. And they have different price tags to go with them. The manufacturers of these cars are Precision Scale, Pacific Limited, Yoder Models and Keystone Model Works.
In recent years we have been blessed with a plastic version from Atlas O. While not a a finely detailed as some of the better brass car the cost about one sixth of the newest brass cars.
I hope to have additional posts about my modeling of these hopper cars.
