History: In the 1930's ACF introduced
a new covered hopper which would allow bulk shipments of dry materials.
Previously these were packaged and resulted in hand loading and unloading.
These commodities included cement dry chemicals, flour, grain. sand, sugar
and many others. The first cars where shipped in October 1936 and had a
capacity of 1958 cubic feet. These where soon to become a railroad standard
and received AAR designation "LO". They were 35' 3" in length
had 2 bays with 4 discharge openings, 8 square roof hatches and 70 ton weight
capacity. Through the years they were copied by several other manufacturers
with very few visible changes. In time many railroad purchased or leased
these cars, including roads such as ACL, C&O, CB&Q, Clinchfield,
DT&I Erie, Great Northern, Nickel Plate Road, N&W, Santa Fe and
many others. Many private owner cars also existed. Between 1936 and 1957
more than 21,000 of the ACF designed cars were built some of which still
can be found in company service on various roads.
Ordering: You can order any quantity. Different
road numbers are available indicated by the following keys in the "Description":
we have 3 road numbers available if the first letter is a plus sign [+]
and we have 12 road numbers if the first letter is an asterisk [*]
.
Listing of Available Models and Associated Car Numbers: The list
below identifies the cars and roadnames that are currently available. Underlined
part numbers have pictures available for you to see on-line by clicking on part
number. Please note that each production run of a roadname uses a new series
of car numbers. We do not re-use a previous numbering series for any subsequent
production run. Thus, we only can fill orders for the most current production
run and associated numbering series. Please refer to our list of Open Sided 70 Ton 2-Bay Covered Hopper and/or our list of list of Closed Sided 70 Ton 2-Bay Covered Hopper car numbers that have be used and the current numbers which are available.
