Atlas - 50 004 539 - Open Hopper, 2-Bay, 100 Ton - Golden West Service - 629649

Specific Item Information: In the 1970’s, Greenville began to build a fleet of venerable open top hoppers. These would be known as the Greenville 100-ton 2-Bay Hopper. They could been seen in any type of service, hauling rock, ballast, dirt, sand, and even taconite ore. Their smaller size and 2-bay hopper doors made them very versatile for any service in any condition. Atlas’ offering of the Greenville Hopper features crisp lettering, durable body, fine end ladder and end details, and free rolling trucks. A group of cars would look right at home in a unit train arriving from the quarry or buried in your consist delivering a shipment of clean dirt to a construction site.

Model Information: Walthers announced this car in late July 2010 with delivery in March of 2011. These ready-to-run models feature a detailed, one-piece plastic body, a heavy one-piece die cast underframe, separate door and brake details, free-rolling trucks and working knuckle couplers.

Matching Aggregate Load: Walthers 933-801

Prototype History: Since the 1970s, these versatile twin hoppers have been used in ballast, sand, gravel and ore service. You'll find single car shipments as well as unit trains running on the rails, Several railroads (including Wisconsin Central, Southern, Norfolk Southern and others) have also used them to haul taconite pellets from mines and ports to steel mills.
Used everywhere, they're at home in your quarry, steel mills or waterfront scenes. Add them to your work trains as ballast hoppers, or to your unit rock trains alongside Ortner Aggregate Hoppers for runs across your layout.

From Walthers, as description to the N scale model of the Greenville 100-Ton 2-Bay Open Hopper.

Road Name History: Golden West was a financial invention -- SP wanted to get capital equipment off the books but the railroad needed the cars. So a corporation was invented that used borrowed money to "buy" the cars, refurbish them, and lease them back to the SP. In the long run this is basically a transfer of wealth from the railroad to the investors, but in the short run it helped the railroad by providing working capital. The UP ended the whole deal as soon as it could and that is why everything is reverting to original ownership.

Brand/Importer Information: In 1924 Stephan Schaffan, Sr. founded the Atlas Tool Company in Newark, New Jersey. In 1933 his son, Stephan Schaffan, Jr., came to work for his father at the age of sixteen. Steve Jr. built model airplanes as a hobby and frequented a local hobby shop. Being an enterprising young man, he would often ask the owner if there was anything he could do to earn some extra spending money. Tired of listening to his requests, the hobby-store owner threw some model railroad track parts his way and said, "Here, see if you can improve on this".

In those days, railroad modelers had to assemble and build everything from scratch. Steve Jr. created a "switch kit" which sold so well, that the entire family worked on them in the basement at night, while doing business as usual in the machine shop during the day.

Subsequently, Steve Jr. engineered the stapling of rail to fiber track, along with inventing the first practical rail joiner and pre-assembled turnouts and flexible track. All of these products, and more, helped to popularize model railroading and assisted in the creation of a mass-market hobby. The budding entrepreneur quickly outgrew the limitations of a basement and small garage operation. Realizing they could actually make a living selling track and related products, Steve and his father had the first factory built in Hillside, New Jersey at 413 Florence Avenue in 1947. On September 30, 1949, the Atlas Tool Company was officially incorporated as a New Jersey company.

In 1985, Steve was honored posthumously for his inventions by the Model Railroad Industry Association and was inducted into the Model Railroad Industry Hall of Fame in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition, Steve was nominated and entered into the National Model Railroad Association Pioneers of Model Railroading in 1995.

In the early 1990s, the Atlas Tool Company changed its name to Atlas Model Railroad Company, Inc.