Model Railroading > Hatched Roof Boxcars

I have a mild obsession with boxcars that have hatches installed on the roofs for loading. They are just neat.
Recently Intermountain offered the Milwaukee Road spent grain cars in the rib side car version in HO scale.
I'd bugged them for a while to get these out, and all of a sudden they appeared in the 'arrivals' 
These are very nice cars.   (note, not making any accuracy claims)
But Guess what!? There are more! unbeknownst to me, Bowser has done 3 versions of 40ft hatched roof boxcars.
What the heck?  So I ordered a couple.
I got a C&NW car and a Central of Georgia car.There is a Southern car listed as not arrived too. I need to get me one.
Of note the hatch arrangements are different on the car roofs between them, a nice touch. I'd like to know if the Southern
is different yet, but cannot confirm.
I'm just sharing this here because the Bowser cars were a complete surprise. Maybe others, like those that model the
Beer line or other brewery operations, will want these. Note that the CofG and Southern cars are used for minerals
while the C&NW and Milw cars are used for spent grains (kind of like what we call DDG now) Others have been
used for cement and other pelletized or dry bulk commodities. Enjoy

Seaboard had a few, cars were silver with round hatches, if I remember correctly.  
john

About December 1997 the BAR , then part of Iron Roads Railway , released 15 cars from Derby,Maine shops in the 90500-90514 series that had roof hatches. They were noteworthy for being painted : solid blue,solid red,solid white with at least one painted red/white/blue. Fifty foot boxcars as I recall.

Good to know, thank you. I was only able to get 1 Milwaukee hatch car as apparently they are all gone already. Maybe I'll get some in the next round. But this gives me more options.

Mike ONeill
Parker, CO

The Bowser cars are not prototypically accurate, with or without roof hatches. They are round roof PRR X31's redone with a conventional, peaked roof. No peaked roof cars I can think of have five narrow side panels to the left of the door and four wide panels to the right. Too bad, since the paint and lettering is very well done.

Burlington Northern has a few prototypes of a car type that a cross between covered hopper and boxcar.

Also the Bowser cars all have molded on grab irons and ladders.   IM cars all have separate grabs and ladders and way better underframe detail.

The cars were not silver, they were gray.  These cars were used in phosphate loading. They had modified 1937 cars and then brand new outside braced cars as well.

The silver cars you mentioned were insulated and used in beer service.  They were used, on theIr return trips, to haul cans back to the brewery. 

The Monon ordered some modern PS boxcars with hatches. One is preserved north of Monon IN.
Using Trainorders’ “Way Back Machine”, you can find a photo of mine:
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?2,3891582,3891585#3891585

Posted from iPhone

Kevink -  thank you for the link to the photos of the Monon , and others ,very enjoyable!  The Monon 15030 is similar to the BAR cars I mentioned except the BAR cars are smooth sided 50 footers.