Bowser - 37855 - Open Hopper, 2-Bay, GLa - Buffalo Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad - 41011

Model Information: Bowser originally produced these models in kit form. However, all releases since 2007 or so are in Ready-To-Run (RTR) form. The kit form it included: a one piece plastic molded body, underframe, brake wheel, air reservoir, brake cylinder, control valve, X2f and McHenry KS couplers, plastic trucks/wheels and steel car weights.

This model comes in two variations: a vertical and a horizontal brake wheel. The ones with vertical brake wheels are delicate, so handle them with care. The plastic loads that come with the cars are low-to-mid grade quality and not up to the standards of the rest of this quite excellent car. Recent releases use high grade (MTL clone) body-mounted couplers and blackened metal wheels and are easily a nice value for their relatively low cost.

Prototype History: In 1898, Pressed Steel Car Co. built the first all-steel hopper car designated the GL. The Pennsylvania Railroad would purchase several thousand of this design. Due to production backlogs at P.S.C.Co. and flaws in the initial design, the Penny came up with its own all-steel, bottom-discharge hopper car in 1904 designated the GLa. Approximately 30,000 GLa's were produced between 1904 and 1920. The Pennsy also built Gla's for numerous coal companies who were anxious for the well-built and reasonably priced cars. Until the 1960s, this design was one of the three most numerous classes of PRR freight cars. Although by this time, these cars began to rapidly disappear from the PRR roster, a few made it into the Penn Central and even Conrail rosters, lasting into the early 1980s.

Road Name History: 1 of 5 Railroad of the Day: Buffalo Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway. External Inbox blufordshops@aol.com Attachments Sun, Jul 2, 2:58 PM (18 hours ago) to Railroad of the Day: Buffalo Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway. The BR&P, chartered in 1887, combined the Buffalo Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad (which had acquired the New York assets of the Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad in 1885) and the Pittsburgh & State Line Railroad (which had acquired the Pennsylvania assets of the Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad, also in 1885). The Y-shaped 520 mile system had lines running from Buffalo and Rochester, New York southeast and southwest, respectively, to Ashford where they met. The line continued south into Pennsylvania as far as Falls Creek and Walston, where connections forwarded traffic to Pittsburgh. In 1898-99 a BR&P construction subsidiary, the Allegheny & Western, extended the BR&P from Punxsutawney to Butler PA, where it connected to the B&O Railroad's Pittsburgh Division. Nearly half of the 285 route miles between Rochester NY and Butler PA were double tracked between 1901-1903. Traffic was primarily coal, moving north. Ferry service was offered between Charlotte, New York, on Lake Ontario, and Cobourg, Ontario and a connection, there, with Grand Trunk Railway. BR&P relied heavily on Mallets, rostering an impressive fleet of 55 2-6-6-2’s as well as nine 2-8-8-2 pushers. Baltimore & Ohio bought control of the company in 1929 and took over operations in 1932

Brand/Importer Information: On May 1, 1961, Bowser was purchased by Lewis and Shirlee English and moved from Redlands, CA to their basement in Muncy, PA. The original Bowser Manufacturing Co first advertised in the model railroad magazines in November 1948. At that time, the company had only one (HO Scale) engine, the Mountain, which had a cast brass boiler that is no longer available. It was sometime later that Bowser (Redlands) developed the NYC K-11 and the UP Challenger. The molds were made by K. Wenzlaff who introduced himself at the MRIA Show in Pasadena, CA in 1985 These two locomotives are still current production.

Bowser entered into N Scale in 1998 with their acquisition of the Delaware Valley Car Company, a manufacturer of N scale freight cars.