Plastic pellet car options

[fr8kar]

As I was going through my fleet and installing couplers, I took a count of how many of each car I had, what type, what might need work on the car, etc. I realized not only do I have a serious lack of gondolas and reefers, but apparently I've seriously overlooked pellet cars.

I have three of the Walthers NSC hoppers, which would be brand new at the end of my modeling era. I just bid on a couple Atlas ACF 5800s on ebay and plan to pick up some ACF 5701s.

What other pellet hoppers are available in HO? Does anyone make the PS/Trinity 5800?

[buffalobill]

The early Plastic Pellet hoppers were the GATC Dry Flow Chem cars, followed in the early 1960's by the Pullman 3500's and the ACF Cylindrical 3500's. In 1965 ACF introduced the 5250 with the 5031 outlet, which became the industry standard for years. In the later 1970's the Plastics producers introduced linear low density resins, and the 5701 became the standard. North American had their 5750, and Pullman had the 5820 CF car with the Micromatic outlet. In 1985 Thrall introduced the 5800 CF car, marketed by Union Tank, which caused ACF to slightly modify their slope sheets to gain 100 cf of Capacity. Richmond also marketed a Foreign produced kit car, assembled in Texas, during the early 1980's in the 5800 cf size. Procor also produced a 5800 CF car in Canada generally similar to the Pullman design in the 1970s and 1980's. In the 1990's the National Steel Car design became popular first as a 263K car and later as a 286K car.

In plastic, the Atlas 3500 is offered in Plastic Company paint schemes, but with Gravity outlets, Athearn has the late 1960's design 5250, Atlas has both the 5701 and the 5800 versions, and Walther's has the NSC car. Both the Pullman 5820 and the Richmond car were offered in Brass. But other than a crude resin model of the North American design offered in the 1980's and the Eastern Car Dry Flow Chem Car Kit bash, no other plastic resin or pellet cars have been offered. Maybe its the bland gray paint jobs, and the fact they mostly look similar which is probably keeping Manufacturers from jumping in.

Bill

[fr8kar]

Bill, thank you for the breakdown. That's exactly the kind of information I was seeking.