Models
Jersey Central 50 ton "fishbelly" hopper (N Scale)
Photo of production model
Decal artwork shown enlarged for clarity
The Model
This is an Atlas N scale 50 ton two bay fishbelly hopper with die cast underframe, ready to run with a removable coal load and AccuMate knuckle couplers installed. It is painted in the scheme with the Lady Liberty/Jersey Central Line herald. All printing was done by Atlas except the road numbers and the reporting marks. A decal sheet is included with at least 10 NEW complete road numbers. Hundreds more can be easily made with only one splice of the decals. The decal was created from Atlas' artwork, so is a perfect match for the printing on the model.
100 unnumbered cars have been produced in 2007 exclusively for sale by the Anthracite Railroads Historical Society. The price is $13.00 each.
The Prototype
The so-called "fishbelly" hopper design was developed by the Bethlehem Steel Car Company in 1936 as a way to deliver a higher volume of coal in a lighter car. Per weight of the car, this design was able to carry more coal than the 1918 USRA design or the 1926 design offset side hopper, because the deeper sides of the hopper provided more volume with lighter empty weight.
The Reading Company built a total of 1,000 hoppers of this design for the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey in 1942, possibly from kits supplied by Bethlehem Steel. They were numbered as CNJ 67000 - 67999. The majority were transferred to the subsidiary Central Railroad Company of Pennsylvania and received CRP reporting marks, but retained the same car numbers. In 1949, 706 cars carried CRP reporting marks, but all were relettered CNJ in 1952.
Some cars in this series were rebuilt as flat-bottomed gondolas, and renumbered into series 60000 - 60864, and the CNJ had 379 of these rebuilt cars on the roster in 1968.