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Bluford Shops - 66101 - Open Hopper, 2-Bay, Offset Side - South Buffalo - 127

Collectors value this item at an average of 15.0015.00Collectors value this item at an average of 15.00
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N Scale - Bluford Shops - 66101 - Open Hopper, 2-Bay, Offset Side - South Buffalo - 127 Copyright Held by TroveStar
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Stock Number66101
Original Retail Price$24.95
BrandBluford Shops
ManufacturerBluford
Body StyleBluford Open Hopper 2-Bay Offset Side
Prototype VehicleOpen Hopper, 2-Bay, Offset Side (Details)
Road or Company NameSouth Buffalo (Details)
Reporting MarksSB
Road or Reporting Number127
Paint Color(s)Red
Print Color(s)Yellow
Coupler TypeGeneric Magnetic Knuckle
Coupler MountBody-Mount
Wheel TypeChemically Blackened Metal
Wheel ProfileSmall Flange (Low Profile)
Release Date2017-07-01
Item CategoryRolling Stock (Freight)
Model TypeOpen Hopper
Model Subtype2-Bay
Model VarietyOffset Side
Prototype RegionNorth America
Prototype EraEU Epoch II (1920 - 1945)
Scale1/160



Specific Item Information: South Buffalo Railway received this group of hoppers from their parent company Bethlehem Steel in 1949. The SB was a busy 60 mile line serving heavy industry in the Lackawanna, New York area. It merged into Buffalo & Pittsburgh in 2001.
Model Information: Bluford Shops is proud to announce our fourth new body style in N scale for July 2017. Our new 2-Bay Offset Side hopper features a 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; and Fox Valley Models metal wheel. Each road name will be available in multiple road numbers. MSRP is $24.95 per car.

A 2-bay hopper design with offset sides was first proposed in the 1920s and first appeared in the form seen here in 1934. The AAR adopted it as a standard design the following year. The offset design permitted greater interior capacity than a rib side car with the same outside dimensions. It was thought this more than made up for the car’s higher cost of construction. The last new 2-bay offset side hoppers were built in 1960.

All road names are available in multiple road numbers. For instance, order a single, a 2-pack and a 3-pack to get all six road numbers on a run. (Some road names will be available in just three road numbers.)
Prototype History:
The late 1920s saw the introduction of the AAR standard “offset-side” 50- and 70-ton hoppers. The design went through several variations in the late 1920s and early 1930s before settling on two versions of the 50-ton car and one 3-bay, 70-ton car in 1935. Most roads went for the AAR standard designs, but the N&W, VGN, and Pennsy were notable holdouts. World War II brought the famous “war emergency” hoppers (only the N&W and MP bought the 70-ton version) and several composite versions of existing designs. After the war, AC&F found some brief success with a welded outside-stake hopper design, but the weld joints broke under the stress of loading and unloading rather than flexing like riveted joints. The offset-side design also had problems: the inside stakes were more prone to corrosion, and they suffered worse from loading and unloading stress than outside-staked hoppers. The design waned in the 1950s and was all but abandoned for new cars by 1960. Some roads (notably the C&O, the B&O, and the L&N) made the best of a bad situation by rebuilding their offset-side cars with all new outside-staked sides in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Road Name History:
South Buffalo Railway received this group of hoppers from their parent company Bethlehem Steel in 1949. The SB was a busy 60 mile line serving heavy industry in the Lackawanna, New York area. It merged into Buffalo & Pittsburgh in 2001.

The SB was established in 1901 to be a neutral switching line serving the steel mills and neighboring industries in the Lackawanna, New York area. For most of its history, SB was owned by Bethlehem Steel and their diesel fleet wore a variation of the yellow and black used on other shortlines owned by Bethlehem. Three dozen switchers were typically required to run SB’s 60 miles of track. In addition to the steel mill, SB also serves a Ford Motor Company plant, the docks at Buffalo and a number of smaller industries. The Genesee & Wyoming group had wanted to add the SB to their family of shortlines since the 1980s and the deal was finally made in 2001. SB slipped to the status of paper railroad with G&W’s Buffalo & Pittsburgh now handling operations.
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.
Item created by: gdm on 2017-07-19 20:34:03. Last edited by gdm on 2021-01-04 15:14:45

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