A Couple of Woodchip Hoppers

In between rebuilding panels with pushbuttons and adding signals, I've been working on some new rolling stock. Last summer, Bowser came out with the classic woodchip hopper car based on a rebuilt 70 ton 3-bay offset hopper car. I had planned to kitbash a handful of these, but Bowser saved me the trouble. They even offer both a smooth side extension and a panel extension.

These cars were originally built for coal service in the late 1950's. In 1962 and 1963, the CWE shops added extension to a number of these cars and they were converted to woodchip service. The first car is shown in the original paint scheme while the second car has been repainted in the modern scheme introduced in 1968.

The "Wood Chip Service" lettering comes from Microscale set 87-1339 Seaboard Coast Line Misc. Wood Chip and General Service Gondolas. Each sheet contains four white and two yellow "Wood Chip Service" strips- enough for three cars! Finding these decals was pure luck. The font just happen to be in an almost identical font to the lettering I had used for previous woodchip hoppers, only larger. And the color of the yellow is just close enough to the UP Armor Yellow on the ends to work. In fact, it was the yellow woodchip lettering that provided the inspiration for the earlier paint scheme. It's nice to get really lucky every once in a while.

Look for a post on the entire woodchip fleet sometime in the near future.