Model Railroading > Question about Athearn BB ACF Hopper

I have a question for those that are knowledgeable about the various ACF hoppers. As some people probably realize the ACF 4-bay hopper produced by Athearn for decades is really a plastic pellet hopper setup for a granular product. I'm not sure which specific capacity the model is modeled after (if any), but Athearn and others had no qualms about applying grain car paint schemes to the car. For years it was a good kitbash project for amateur kitbashers to turn the Athearn model into a 3-bay grain hopper. Then that brought up the thought old Irv could have created a new bottom for the car with 3 grain bays and still used the rest of the parts (or maybe a new doors on top as well). Athearn of today could possibly upgrade the car in such a manner, giving them a choice to match paint schemes. So the questions is, how close is the Athearn model to a ACF 4650 or similar 3-bay grain hopper?

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

The 50(?) year old Athearn Blue Box / RTR 4-bay hopper is modeled after the ACF 5250 cu ft prototype. In my opinion, a model that badly needs to be retooled from the ground up. The Irv Athearn era tooling is seriously lacking by contemporary standards. The hoppers are still around in real life today! There must be close to 100 paint schemes available for the car by now between railroad, private, and plain-jane lease markings.

Mr. MRL

funnelfan Wrote:
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> well). Athearn of today could possibly upgrade the
> car in such a manner, giving them a choice to
> match paint schemes. So the questions is, how
> close is the Athearn model to a ACF 4650 or
> similar 3-bay grain hopper?

I'm with Mr. MRL, that Athearn 4-bay CF5250 tooling is so old and outdated it's badly in need of a proper modern tooled replacement.  There is a car for Scale Trains to do if there ever was one!  Also why worry about how close it is to the 4650?  Don't we already have two pretty good models from Atlas and Intermountain for the 4650?  If anything we need a modernized CF4600 and CF5250 I would guess.

Cheers, Jim Fitch

The idea to convert the  Athearn's 4-bay to 3-bay is good. However, do not mind it to be a little long. The attached photos are two modified examples decorated by CM Shops.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/16 19:54 by BN7023.

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Many years ago I added trough-style hatches and DA #6229 outlet gates to two of these cars. I painted them for ADMX and overall they turned out well..........

The following photos are kitbash to an ex-GN car (171250-171449, "GRAIN LOADING" stenciled). The processing was burdensome to lower the body. Oh, it has lost two steps in 16 years.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/16 16:53 by BN7023.

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16 years and many miles on that one ^^^ nice job - glad you didn't wait til the perfect model came out.

funnelfan Wrote:
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> I have a question for those that are knowledgeable
> about the various ACF hoppers. As some people
> probably realize the ACF 4-bay hopper produced by
> Athearn for decades is really a plastic pellet
> hopper setup for a granular product. I'm not sure
> which specific capacity the model is modeled after
> (if any), but Athearn and others had no qualms
> about applying grain car paint schemes to the car.
> For years it was a good kitbash project for
> amateur kitbashers to turn the Athearn model into
> a 3-bay grain hopper. Then that brought up the
> thought old Irv could have created a new bottom
> for the car with 3 grain bays and still used the
> rest of the parts (or maybe a new doors on top as
> well). Athearn of today could possibly upgrade the
> car in such a manner, giving them a choice to
> match paint schemes. So the questions is, how
> close is the Athearn model to a ACF 4650 or
> similar 3-bay grain hopper?

Ted: Your statement that Athearn's 4-bay hopper being primarily a  plastic pellet hopper is not correct. Great Northern had 250 of the "Athearn" 4-bay hoppers 5250 cu ft made in 1965 by ACF and they were specifically for Grain Loading. DRGW had 100 or so made in 1973 for the same purpose. Large rail movement of plastic pellets didn't occur until later in the 70s.
As for converting an Athearn into a 3 bay, it is not hard to do but size wise the proportions are way too large compared to Accurail, Atlas, or Front Range (early Intermountain) 3-bay ACF hoppers. Stick to Atlas, Accurail, IM for more accurately sized 4650 ACF hoppers.

70ACE Wrote:
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> Ted: Your statement that Athearn's 4-bay hopper
> being primarily a  plastic pellet hopper is not
> correct. Great Northern had 250 of the "Athearn"
> 4-bay hoppers 5250 cu ft made in 1965 by ACF and
> they were specifically for Grain Loading. DRGW had
> 100 or so made in 1973 for the same purpose. Large
> rail movement of plastic pellets didn't occur
> until later in the 70s.

Prototype-wise this is true, but I've never seen any out-of-the-box Athearns that had the correct hopper gates for grain service. As far as I can recall, Athearn itself mostly produced them in plastics-company paint schemes, but after-market decorators like CM Shops and Bev-Bel issued them in railroad names -- mostly for roads that never had the four-bay version in grain service, and also with the pneumatic gates used for shipping plastic pellets.

toledopatch Wrote:
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> 70ACE Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Ted: Your statement that Athearn's 4-bay hopper
> > being primarily a  plastic pellet hopper is
> not
> > correct. Great Northern had 250 of the
> "Athearn"
> > 4-bay hoppers 5250 cu ft made in 1965 by ACF
> and
> > they were specifically for Grain Loading. DRGW
> had
> > 100 or so made in 1973 for the same purpose.
> Large
> > rail movement of plastic pellets didn't occur
> > until later in the 70s.
>
> Prototype-wise this is true, but I've never seen
> any out-of-the-box Athearns that had the correct
> hopper gates for grain service. As far as I can
> recall, Athearn itself mostly produced them in
> plastics-company paint schemes, but after-market
> decorators like CM Shops and Bev-Bel issued them
> in railroad names -- mostly for roads that never
> had the four-bay version in grain service, and
> also with the pneumatic gates used for shipping
> plastic pellets.

You're correct. I've only seen one or two examples of any Athearn BB products that modeled a prototype even 90% accurately.  Those hopper gates Athearn modeled appear to have been modeled after early pneumatic discharge gates. The after market decorators themselves didn't always get it correct either. I've many examples of BevBel custom paint jobs of the PS 4750 cu ft 3 bay hopper on the Athearn PS 4740 cu ft model.   And, many of the after market custom paint schemes were remakes of early Athearn runs (60s and 70s) based on the early prototypes.

70ACE Wrote:
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> I've only seen one or two examples
> of any Athearn BB products that modeled a
> prototype even 90% accurately.  Those hopper
> gates Athearn modeled appear to have been modeled
> after early pneumatic discharge gates. The after
> market decorators themselves didn't always get it
> correct either. I've many examples of BevBel
> custom paint jobs of the PS 4750 cu ft 3 bay
> hopper on the Athearn PS 4740 cu ft model.   And,
> many of the after market custom paint schemes were
> remakes of early Athearn runs (60s and 70s) based
> on the early prototypes.

Of course, when many of those BevBel paint jobs were done, the only real game in town was the Athearn product. The 4740 was a reasonable stand-in for the 4750 as long as nobody was making a 4750 in plastic. Since then, we've gotten the Intermountain, Tangent, and Accurail versions, and Athearn's 4740 looks crude in comparison to Tangent's 4740, too. Use of the Athearn Center-Flow as a grain car wasn't nearly as close to accurate as the various paint schemes on its PS 4740 were.

I got rid of the plastics-car foobies many years ago, but I still have several dozen Athearn/Bev-Bel and/or Athearn/CM Shops grain hoppers deep in the bowels of my rolling-stock collection. Maybe I can unload them on eBay as "collector's items," but I probably won't bother. They probably wouldn't even fetch the value of the Kadee couplers on them.
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/16 19:49 by toledopatch.

In O-scale, Pecos River Brass sold the 3-bay-underframes for Weaver's 4-bay ACF covered hoppers. I thought the cheapest way was cut-and-connect.

Speaking of which, U.S. Hobbies' brass was also 4-bay.
In HO-scale, Athearn, AHM, Bachmann, Tyco, Life-Like, NorthEastern, Ambroid were 4-bay all. In N-scale, Atlas was of course 4-bay. For 3-bay, we had to wait until the Front Range (or McKean) in 1987.
Why did everyone released 4-bay? Do you have any idea about this?

The 1st photo is  Government of Canada by Weaver, and the 2nd is Southern Pacific by US Hobbies/Toby in 1968. Both schemes wonder fake?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/16 19:16 by BN7023.

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While the gates might be off (depending on the scheme), and it is a little lacking in modern standard details, its still one of the better "blue box" models, and can still be found for next to nothing.. They make a good start for a detailing project. 

Although much rarer, they were used in grain service. I have attached a pic from 20 years ago of a SSW version, that was at a animal feed warehouse. 

It was shot at about mid day, and the photo is washed out from the roll not being developed for 20 years, so we don't get a look at the outlets. 

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So the answer to my question is that there was a grain hauling cousin to the Athearn BB ACF hopper in the 4-bay 5250cuft grain car. But it wasn't popular enough to justify tooling a seperate underframe just for it.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/16 08:15 by funnelfan.

Over the years I have done several of those underframe "hacks" to create three-bay grain cars.  The UP used a number of ACF 4600s versus the commonly tooled 4650.  One other annoyance on the Athearn tooling is that they have the car side stiffening rib (at the top third of the car) and later cars eliminated that rib and added stiffeners at the top of the car side.  Removing the side stiffening rib plays heck with any pre-painted cars.  So the Athearn car modified with three bays is a close match for UP's class CH-90-9, but their other ACF cars need to have the side rib deleted (this comment doesn't account for cars acquired via mergers)

Gary B.
Waverly, NE

Some years ago I was going to do sort of the opposite, do a 4-bay hack to an Accurail CF4600 to turn it visually into a D&RGW CF5250 grain car.  I think it was a scale drawing by Eric Nuebauer that I had at the time to cut up and build a 4-bay bottom but lost or misplaced it. 

The Athearn model has the angle iron stiffiner but the D&RGW car instead has the twin bead stiffener on the upper chord.  IIRC, the Athearn model was a bit too long while the Accurail was a bit too short so neither car was dimensionally 100% accurate.  Since the Accurail car had the twin bead stiffeners that matched the D&RGW prototype, giving it 4-bays and cutting off the molded on roof walk and changing it out for the 13-stanchion version from Plano would get the car most of the way there visually.

Cheers, Jim Fitch

If the early 1990s, I think that the CF5800 by McKean was the best starting point to create CF5250s. It was 62-foot long, plate C and post-1972 style.

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BN7023 Wrote:
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> If the early 1990s, I think that the CF5800 by
> McKean was the best starting point to create
> CF5250s. It was 62-foot long, plate C and
> post-1972 style.

Were those also sold under the Front Range brand to or did they come after?

In my understanding, Front Range Products by Fred Becker was 1982-1989. McKean Models by Bill McKean was 1978-1993. In 1990 both were merged, and released the CF5800.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/26/16 14:09 by BN7023.

I've been looking at these as a VERY loose stand in for a Thrall 5150 Cuft hopper. I just havent found three bays to fit into the shell or a way to modify the end cut outs to get close to teh Thrall profile.