Bluford Shops - 60072 - Open Hopper, 2-Bay, USRA 55 Ton - Montour - 2 Road Numbers

Specific Item Information: The Montour Railroad was a pocket-size coal hauling machine. They served 27 mines with just 50 miles of railroad in southwestern Pennsylvania. This required a fleet of 1,500 USRA 2-bay hoppers along with another 500 hoppers of other designs. Montour was jointly owned by Pennsylvania Railroad and Pittsburgh & Lake Erie.

Model Information: These ready-to-run cars feature: die cast slope sheet-hopper bay-center sill assembly; injection molded plastic sides, ends, and hopper doors; fully molded brake tank, valve and air lines; body mounted brake hose detail; coal load; lever-style hand brake; body mounted magnetically operating knuckle couplers; close coupling; and Fox Valley Models metal wheels.

Prototype History: The USRA 55-Ton hopper was designed by the United States Railway Administration during World War I as a standardized hopper to be used by all railroads in order to aid the war effort. After WWI many railroads continued to use the USRA 55-Ton hoppers, as well as build many thousands more clones. The USRA hopper was in use on North American railroads from 1918 until the 1970’s

Road Name History: The Montour was established in 1877 to connect a large coal mine in Imperial to a connection with the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie in Coraopolis, in southwestern Pennsylvania. As mining in the area increased, so did the railroad. During the Depression, Montour served 27 mines along its 50-something miles of line. In 1946, Montour was jointly purchased by Pittsburgh & Lake Erie and Pennsylvania Railroad. P&LE picked up full control in 1975. For much of its history, Montour used only the letter “M” as its official reporting mark. Later this was changed to MTR when the Association of American Railroads began to frown upon single letter reporting marks. In 1984, the last coal mine closed and the remaining 23 miles of the Montour Railroad was abandoned.

Brand/Importer Information: Bluford Shops began in 2007 as a side project of two model railroad industry veterans, Craig Ross and Steve Rodgers. They saw a gap between road names available on N scale locomotives but not available on cabooses. They commissioned special runs of Atlas cabooses in Atlantic Coast Line, Central of Georgia, Monon, Boston & Maine and Southern plus runs on Grand Trunk Western and Central Vermont on the MDC wooden cabooses. While these were in process, they began to develop their first all new tooling project, 86' Auto Parts Boxcars in double door and quad door editions in N scale. By January of 2008, Bluford Shops became a full time venture. Along with additional N scale freight cars and their own tooling for new cabooses, they have brought their own caboose line to HO scale. They also have their popular Cornfields in both HO and N. The future looks bright as they continue to develop new products for your railroad.

The town of Bluford in southern Illinois featured a small yard on Illinois Central's Edgewood Cutoff (currently part of CN.) The yard included a roundhouse, concrete coaling tower (which still stands) and large ice house. Reefer trains running between the Gulf Coast and Chicago were re-iced in Bluford. Things are more quiet now in Bluford with the remaining tracks in the yard used to stage hoppers for mines to the south and store covered hoppers. Intersecting the IC line in Bluford is Southern Railway's (currently NS) line between Louisville and St. Louis. Traffic on this single track line remains relatively heavy.