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Bluford Shops - 63011 - Open Hopper, 2-Bay, Composite - Chesapeake & Ohio - 53849

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N Scale - Bluford Shops - 63011 - Open Hopper, 2-Bay, Composite - Chesapeake & Ohio - 53849
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Stock Number63011
Original Retail Price$24.95
BrandBluford Shops
ManufacturerBluford
Body StyleBluford Open Hopper 2-Bay Composite War Emergency
Prototype VehicleOpen Hopper, 2-Bay, Composite (Details)
Road or Company NameChesapeake & Ohio (Details)
Reporting MarksC&O
Road or Reporting Number53849
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 VarietyComposite War Emergency
Prototype RegionNorth America
Prototype EraNA Era III: Transition (1939 - 1957)
Scale1/160
Track GaugeN standard



Specific Item Information: Chesapeake & Ohio's fleet of 1,250 War Emergency Composite Hoppers was built by Pullman Standard's plants in Butler, Pennsylvania and Michigan City, Indiana in 1943. C&O was so important to the movement of coal for the war effort that their mainline was targeted by German spies during the war.
Model Information: Bluford Shops is proud to announce our third new body style in N scale for July 2017. This time we have 2-Bay War Emergency Composite Hoppers. These are the predecessors of the Rebuilt War Emergency Hoppers we announced last month. These cars were built during the Second World War with wood siding and slope sheets at the direction of the War Production Board in hopes of saving as much steel as possible for the war effort. This was especially the case with hoppers that were usually built with copper-bearing steel to resist corrosion. The car sides were built with the Pratt truss design using a combination of vertical and diagonal ribs. A majority were later rebuilt with steel replacing the wood components but some composite cars remained in service into the 1970s.

These ready-to-run cars feature: 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; close coupling; and Fox Valley Models metal wheels.

All road names will be 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 story of these 2-Bay War Emergency Hoppers begins in 1942 when the War Production Board directed car builders to substitute wood for steel wherever possible in car superstructures. The familiar 2-Bay War Emergency Composite Hopper was a result of this directive. Those cars had wooden side sheets and end slope sheets (although the middle slope sheets remained steel.)

The wood siding was thicker than comparable steel sheeting and this reduced the capacity of the cars. While you could build ten composite cars with the steel from nine all-steel cars, it took more composite cars to move the same amount of coal. This combined with the more frequent repairs required by the composite cars soured the War Production Board on the design.

During 1944, the directive was set aside and cars that were on order were delivered with the familiar diagonal bracing but with all steel construction. After the war, as composite cars came due for serious maintenance, the wood side and slope sheets were replaced with steel. A large majority of the composite cars were rebuilt in this manner sometime during the 1950s.

From Bluford Shops
Road Name History:
The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (reporting marks C&O, CO) was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond to the Ohio River by 1873, where the railroad town (and later city) of Huntington, West Virginia was named for him.

Tapping the coal reserves of West Virginia, the C&O's Peninsula Extension to new coal piers on the harbor of Hampton Roads resulted in the creation of the new City of Newport News. Coal revenues also led the forging of a rail link to the Midwest, eventually reaching Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo in Ohio and Chicago, Illinois.

By the early 1960s the C&O was headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. In 1972, under the leadership of Cyrus Eaton, it became part of the Chessie System, along with the Baltimore and Ohio and Western Maryland Railway. The Chessie System was later combined with the Seaboard Coast Line and Louisville and Nashville, both the primary components of the Family Lines System, to become a key portion of CSX Transportation (CSXT) in the 1980s. A substantial portion of Conrail was added in 1999.

C&O's passenger services ended in 1971 with the formation of Amtrak. Today Amtrak's tri-weekly Cardinal passenger train follows the historic and scenic route of the C&O through the New River Gorge in one of the more rugged sections of the Mountain State. The rails of the former C&O also continue to transport intermodal and freight traffic, as well as West Virginia bituminous coal east to Hampton Roads and west to the Great Lakes as part of CSXT, a Fortune 500 company which was one of seven Class I railroads operating in North America at the beginning of the 21st century.

At the end of 1970 C&O operated 5067 miles of road on 10219 miles of track, not including WM or B&O and its subsidiaries.

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 19:15:18

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