order cancelled!
I had a six pack of Bowser 55 ton hoppers with data markings only on back order from Walther's, and they had been discontinued, so my back order got canceled.
I was hoping to use those cars to augment my hopper car fleet, as I have been converting more and more of my wood burners to coal, adding coaling facilities at Harlow, Crooked Creek, and State line, as well as building the coke oven @ Montgomery Furnace , and the iron ore/ coal transfer facilities between the Narrow and standard gauge in ridgemont.
Those changes as well as the new expanded staging yard for the Southern interchange, and my determination to get two cars for each delivery location where the other end of the cycle is on interchange staging, left me short of hopper cars.
I ordered 3 3 packs of Acurrail southern 55 ton hoppers. I figure I will keep those on my home RR, along with the 6 Tichy hopper cars, which will get lettered for the J. E. Patterson Coal and Lumber Co., to develop an link to the Club layout. I will also keep all of my L& N and Georgia RR hopper cars, and my favorate hopper car, a N&W wwI USRA wood war emergency hopper, built from a Northeastern Kit. I keep hoping I will be able to find that car in an unbuilt kit, so I can use the instructions , detail parts, and pieces to mass produce that style car, as it was way cool. I built my kit back in the early 1970's, and wasn't smart enough to save the instructions.
That N&W hopper will stay at home, any others I have will probably go to the club, where hoppers will be at a premium to ride behind my Broadway limited Paragon 2 Y6B
At home I have been fighting the cold a lot playing with firewood ect. I did take rime to get one of the tender trucks back on #22, one of my little river 2-4-4-2s before I lost the screw. I have a screw missing out of the valve gear of #21 my ancient Gem 2-4-4-2. it had been run at home and at the club, the screw wasn't in it's transport cradle, and will probably never be found, so I need to start going through my screw collection and see if anything fits. I may end up running a fine phosphor bronze wire through the hole, bending it enough at the ends to keep it in, and painting it black. finding replacements for the tiny metric screws is a pain in the ***.
Bill Nelson