[ Post a Response | Bessemer and Lake Erie Messageboard ]
Posted by urr566 on February 25, 2012, 3:17 pm, in reply to "Re: B&LE Class HK-43"
68.162.174.197
These were the HK42/HK43 class hoppers. Built in 1970-72 by Pullman-Standard. They were called quick dumps or quik drops. Originally painted orange, they later were repainted black. An interesting feature about these cars were that they had 3 bulkhead partitions that divided the inside of the car into 4 compartments. When they were used in coal service the entire car was loaded but when loaded with ore only the 2 center compartments were loaded. A number of these cars found homes after retirement. Of course, Conrail used them in ballast and stone service. Wimpey Minerals (WIMX) got some as well. Sister USS road Birmingham Southern has a decent size roster of them. Ive also heard that near the end of some cars lives on the B&LE the air operated door system was removed and the doors were welded shut, basically making a bathtub hopper for unit coal train service. The CR and WIMX cars were retired/scrapped i guess. BS still has most of theirs although with Watco taking them over who knows what will happen to them. Have you ever seen Trainiax drawings? I modified existing drawings to look like these cars. Since Ive never seen any good photos of these while on the Bessemer i used the CR photo as a reference while making my drawings. There are pics of these while on BS and video from the Reading & Northern of the CR and WIMX cars in stone service.
Message Thread
« Back to index