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Bluford Shops - 66051 - Open Hopper, 2-Bay, Offset Side - Northern Pacific - 70748

One  of these sold for an average price of: 23.6923.69One of these sold for an average price of: 23.69
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N Scale - Bluford Shops - 66051 - Open Hopper, 2-Bay, Offset Side - Northern Pacific - 70748 Image Courtesy of Bluford Shops
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Stock Number66051
Original Retail Price$24.95
BrandBluford Shops
ManufacturerBluford
Body StyleBluford Open Hopper 2-Bay Offset Side
Image Provider's WebsiteLink
Prototype VehicleOpen Hopper, 2-Bay, Offset Side (Details)
Road or Company NameNorthern Pacific (Details)
Reporting MarksNP
Road or Reporting Number70748
Paint Color(s)Black
Print Color(s)White
Coupler TypeGeneric Magnetic Knuckle
Wheel TypeChemically Blackened Metal
Wheel ProfileSmall Flange (Low Profile)
Release Date2017-07-01
Item CategoryRolling Stock (Freight)
Model TypeOpen Hopper
Model Subtype2-Bay
Model VarietyOffset Side
Prototype RegionNorth America
Prototype EraEU Epoch II (1920 - 1945)
Scale1/160



Specific Item Information: Northern Pacific received this group of hoppers from American Car & Foundry in 1941. They are presented here as they appeared after 1967 with ACI tags applied. NP loaded a fair share of lignite which is a low-BTU form of coal.
Model Information: Bluford Shops is proud to announce our fourth new body style in N scale for July 2017. Our new 2-Bay Offset Side hopper features a die cast slope sheet-hopper bay-center sill assembly; injection molded plastic sides, ends and hopper doors; fully molded brake tank, valve and air lines; body mounted brake hose detail; load; body mounted magnetically operating knuckle couplers; and Fox Valley Models metal wheel. Each road name will be available in multiple road numbers. MSRP is $24.95 per car.

A 2-bay hopper design with offset sides was first proposed in the 1920s and first appeared in the form seen here in 1934. The AAR adopted it as a standard design the following year. The offset design permitted greater interior capacity than a rib side car with the same outside dimensions. It was thought this more than made up for the car’s higher cost of construction. The last new 2-bay offset side hoppers were built in 1960.

All road names are available in multiple road numbers. For instance, order a single, a 2-pack and a 3-pack to get all six road numbers on a run. (Some road names will be available in just three road numbers.)
Prototype History:
The late 1920s saw the introduction of the AAR standard “offset-side” 50- and 70-ton hoppers. The design went through several variations in the late 1920s and early 1930s before settling on two versions of the 50-ton car and one 3-bay, 70-ton car in 1935. Most roads went for the AAR standard designs, but the N&W, VGN, and Pennsy were notable holdouts. World War II brought the famous “war emergency” hoppers (only the N&W and MP bought the 70-ton version) and several composite versions of existing designs. After the war, AC&F found some brief success with a welded outside-stake hopper design, but the weld joints broke under the stress of loading and unloading rather than flexing like riveted joints. The offset-side design also had problems: the inside stakes were more prone to corrosion, and they suffered worse from loading and unloading stress than outside-staked hoppers. The design waned in the 1950s and was all but abandoned for new cars by 1960. Some roads (notably the C&O, the B&O, and the L&N) made the best of a bad situation by rebuilding their offset-side cars with all new outside-staked sides in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Road Name History:
The Northern Pacific Railway (reporting mark NP) was a transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the western United States from Minnesota to the Pacific Coast. It was approved by Congress in 1864 and given nearly 40 million acres (160,000 km2) of land grants, which it used to raise money in Europe for construction. Construction began in 1870 and the main line opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific when former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in western Montana on Sept. 8, 1883.

The railroad had about 6800 miles of track and served a large area, including extensive trackage in the states of Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. In addition the company had an international branch to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The main activities were shipping wheat and other farm products, cattle, timber and minerals; bringing in consumer goods, transporting passengers; and selling land.

The company was headquartered first in Brainerd, Minnesota, then in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It had a tumultuous financial history, and in 1970 it merged with other lines to form the Burlington Northern Railroad.

Read more on Wikipedia.
Brand/Importer Information:
Bluford Shops began in 2007 as a side project of two model railroad industry veterans, Craig Ross and Steve Rodgers. They saw a gap between road names available on N scale locomotives but not available on cabooses. They commissioned special runs of Atlas cabooses in Atlantic Coast Line, Central of Georgia, Monon, Boston & Maine and Southern plus runs on Grand Trunk Western and Central Vermont on the MDC wooden cabooses. While these were in process, they began to develop their first all new tooling project, 86' Auto Parts Boxcars in double door and quad door editions in N scale. By January of 2008, Bluford Shops became a full time venture. Along with additional N scale freight cars and their own tooling for new cabooses, they have brought their own caboose line to HO scale. They also have their popular Cornfields in both HO and N. The future looks bright as they continue to develop new products for your railroad.

The town of Bluford in southern Illinois featured a small yard on Illinois Central's Edgewood Cutoff (currently part of CN.) The yard included a roundhouse, concrete coaling tower (which still stands) and large ice house. Reefer trains running between the Gulf Coast and Chicago were re-iced in Bluford. Things are more quiet now in Bluford with the remaining tracks in the yard used to stage hoppers for mines to the south and store covered hoppers. Intersecting the IC line in Bluford is Southern Railway's (currently NS) line between Louisville and St. Louis. Traffic on this single track line remains relatively heavy.
Item created by: gdm on 2017-07-19 20:26:35

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