Bluford Shops - 65033 - Open Hopper, 2-Bay, Rib Side, 8-Panel - Southern - 74071, 74006, 74055

Specific Item Information: Southern Railway acquired this fleet of 8-panel hoppers with the 1971 purchase of the Tennessee Alabama & Georgia Railroad, a short but busy steel hauler connecting the mills of Gadsden, Alabama with Chattanooga. By early 1974, the whole fleet had received Southern’s iconic lettering.

Model Information: 2016 - Bluford Shops is proud to announce an all new body style for your N scale freight car fleet. These 8-Panel 2-Bay Hoppers have never been available before in N. 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; load; body mounted magnetically operating knuckle couplers; close coupling; and Fox Valley Models metal wheels.

Prototype History: In the 1960s, Chesapeake & Ohio’s earliest offset side hoppers were coming due for rebuilding. Rather than fabricating new offset sides, C&O’s Raceland Shops opted for new sides with 8 full length panels joined with external ribs. This made the cars cheaper to rebuild and maintain. It also extended the service lives of the cars into the 1980s. C&O would go on to rebuild over 15,000 cars into 8-panel hoppers. Baltimore & Ohio sent many of their offset side hoppers over to the Raceland Shops of their sister road C&O for rebuilding into 8-panel hoppers. By this time, B&O had adopted C&O’s Futura demi-bold lettering for reporting marks and road numbers but B&O’s capitol dome logo persisted. These cars also operated well into the 1980s.

Road Name History: The Southern Railway (reporting mark SOU) (also known as Southern Railway Company) was a US class 1 railroad that was based in the Southern United States. It was the product of nearly 150 predecessor lines that were combined, reorganized and recombined beginning in the 1830s, formally becoming the Southern Railway in 1894.

At the end of 1970 Southern operated 6,026 miles (9,698 km) of railroad, not including its Class I subsidiaries AGS (528 miles or 850 km) CofG (1729 miles) S&A (167 miles) CNOTP (415 miles) GS&F (454 miles) and twelve Class II subsidiaries. That year Southern itself reported 26111 million net ton-miles of revenue freight and 110 million passenger-miles; AGS reported 3854 and 11, CofG 3595 and 17, S&A 140 and 0, CNO&TP 4906 and 0.3, and GS&F 1431 and 0.3

The railroad joined forces with the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) in 1982 to form the Norfolk Southern Corporation. The Norfolk Southern Corporation was created in response to the creation of the CSX Corporation (its rail system was later transformed to CSX Transportation in 1986). The Southern Railway was renamed Norfolk Southern Railway in 1990 and continued under that name ever since. Seven years later in 1997 the railroad absorbed the Norfolk and Western Railway, ending the Norfolk and Western's existence as an independent railroad.

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.