Unit coal trains, Catale-Kansas City- any pics of the cars?
Back in the 1970s when I lived in Afton, I remember seeing trains of white coal hoppers running between the mines at Catale and a power plant at Kansas City. Loaded, the train was known as the MPS; empties were called the XMP.
They had the Redi Kilowatt character on the sides, along with the name of the utility (KCPL or MPL, if I recall) and were usually pulled by SD45s. The railroaders just called the train the "white hoppers", although after hauling coal they were anything but white.
Does anybody have pictures of the cars in their collections? The closest thing I have seen to these cars is an old release by Model Die Casting of an Ortner 5-bay rapid-discharge hopper in HO scale. I have quite a few McKean and Bowser 100-ton hoppers in the boxcar red and black Frisco schemes, but I'm wanting to try to model this unit coalie as close as possible. Or is this car going to be a scratchbuild?
Thanks in advance.
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