ACF 1958 Cu Ft 2-Bay 70-Ton Covered Hoppers - RPCyc Vol 27

I received my copy of Volume 27 of the Railway Prototype Cyclopedia (RPC) authored by Pat Wider and Ed Hawkins today. Another nice issue.

This issue is particularly interesting to me, as covered hoppers are among my favorite types of freight cars (along with tank cars) as I am an old chemical guy. Pat and Ed use the entire issue to describe the American Car & Foundry (ACF) design of 1939 - the first standard design of an efficient, purpose-built covered hopper car for the transport of dry bulk materials that must be protected from the environment. Previous attempts were simply open-top hoppers with roofs on them. The ACF car, as it evolved after the first couple of prototypes (first car was for L&NE), had a 1958 cubic feet, 70-ton capacity, had two bays, four discharge gates, and eight top-side loading hatches. More than 6000 examples of these cars were built for 35 US railroads and 13 private companies.

This issue is a good history of an innovative new design car, with many car photos and a very complete roster. Unfortunately, the Frisco is not included ..... even though they, too, obtained many of these type cars. Why? - the SLSF did not roster any ACF cars of this design, but instead went to their preferred supplier Pullman-Standard for the P-S version, which appeared on the rails soon after the ACF car, and was essentially a knock-off copy. Later on, the SLSF obtained additional cars from Mt. Vernon, and built some in their shops from kits, but to my belief, never got any from ACF.

But, Volume 27 is a good read anyway, since the P-S car the Frisco favored was in truth pioneered by ..... ACF.

It wasn't until much later on, 1975, when the SLSF obtained 250 2970 cu ft, 100-ton Center-Flow LO's from ACF.

I wonder what the problem was with ACF. Anybody know? I bought many tank cars and a few LO's during my chemical industry days, and we found ACF to be the best specialty chemicals car builder.

Ken

 

William - Most of the lower number volumes are sold out and out of print. From time to time you can find them on eBay, so I would continue to look there.

Ken

 

FYI .......
Today's mail brought me Volume 30 of the "RPCyc", the Railway Prototype Cyclopedia, authored by friends Pat Wider and Ed Hawkins. This issue has a nice article by Pat on WW-2 emergency composite general service gondolas, which the Frisco was not involved with, but ..... also the third installment of Ed's series on ACF-design 1958 ft3 70-ton covered hoppers, these built by Pullman-Standard and by the secondary builders and railroad shops. The first posting in this thread noted this series beginning in RPCyc volume 27 (ACF), and later volume 28 (GATC), but these did not include any Frisco coverage as the SLSF favored P-S. Ah, but we made it this time!

This "LO" design, pioneered by ACF but copied almost exactly by the other builders, was ubiquitous in the railroad industry from the 1940's and on. The Frisco, always a Pullman Standard fan, placed their orders for several hundred cars with Mt. Vernon in 1948, and with P-S in 1950, but only after building 150 cars in the SLSF shops in 1945-46, probably from either kits or a design obtained from one of the builders (ACF, P-S?, I haven't read the article yet!). There are good pics of the Frisco cars: SLSF 83860, 83900 & 83955 (all P-S), 83684 (Mt Vernon) and 83574 (SLSF). The 83900 has a nice end-shot as well, and is carrying a coonskin herald with white outline and lettering, but with a black background, on the car side, unusual for a Frisco LO.

Anyway, I wanted to alert you that there is good Frisco coverage in the latest RPCyc issue. Looks like another good read to me.

Ken