Atlas - 50 002 621 - Open Hopper, Ore Car, 70 Ton - Bessemer & Lake Erie - 20001

Model Information: This model was first produced by Atlas in 1969 in their New Jersey facility with 4 road names at $1.50 each. The model was produced with nickel-silver plated wheels and Rapido truck-mounted couplers. The model was re-released in 1975 with 6 new road names at $2.50 each. More road names were added in 1976 and 1977 and the price was dropped to $2.00 per car. Due to popularity of this car for modeling freight yards, mines and long unit-trains (I recently saw a collection of 200 of these cars), it has been released over and over by Atlas. Later production runs wer moved to China sometime in the 1990s.

Prototype History: The bottom-dump ore car was developed in the late 1930s for use by Lake Superior ore railroads. It is a highly specialized railcar, measuring only 24 feet long and having a capacity of 70 to 80 tons. The 24 foot lenght was designed to be compatible with the 12 foot pocket spacing of the gravity-fed ore docks and the 12 yo 24 foot hatch spacing of the Great Lakes ore-carrying ships. These cars discharge into every other pocket.

The first 70 ton cars came to the DM&IR in 1937. 70 ton cars (with taconite extensions) are still in use today on DM&IR (CN) although they are getting pretty worn out. BN built new taconite cars in the 70's to replace the 70 ton NP and GN cars.

Road Name History: The Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad (reporting mark BLE) is a class II railroad that operates in northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.

The railroad's main route runs from the Lake Erie port of Conneaut, Ohio to the Pittsburgh suburb of Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, a distance of 139 miles (224 km). The original rail ancestor of the B&LE, the Shenango and Allegheny Railroad, began operation in October 1869.

Rail operations were maintained continuously by various corporate descendants on the growing system that ultimately became the B&LE in 1900. In 2004 the B&LE came under the ownership of the Canadian National Railway as part of CN's larger purchase of holding company Great Lakes Transportation. As a subsidiary of CN the B&LE has been largely unchanged (though repainting of B&LE locomotives into CN paint with "BLE" sub-lettering began in April 2015) and still does business as the B&LE. Bessemer and Lake Erie's locomotives, especially the former Souther Pacific SD40T-3 "Tunnel Motors", have been scattered across the CN system lately; ironically, many are being used in the line that feeds most of B&LE's traffic, the former Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range lines in Minnesota. The iron ore that originates on these lines is transloaded to ships at Twin Harbors, Minnesota, then sent by ship to Conneaut, Ohio, where it is again transloaded to B&LE trains. It is then taken down to steel mills in the Pittsburg area, mainly to the blast furnaces at US Steel's Edgar Thompson Plant in Braddock, Pennsylvania, part of the Mon Valley Works. As of summer 2015, most of the locomotives on the B&LE are former Illinois Central standard cab SD70's, although B&LE Tunnel Motor 905 and a few SD38's, still in B&LE orange, are being kept on the line. Also, a few Canadian National locomotives, especially SD60 5422, are assigned to the line.

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.