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Photo of production model

Decal artwork shown enlarged for clarity

Lehigh Valley 50 ton "fishbelly" hopper (N Scale)
 

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 freight car red scheme with the black diamond 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 offset side hopper, because the deeper sides of the hopper provided more volume with lighter empty weight.

Bethlehem Steel Car Company delivered a total of 500 hoppers of this design to the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1939, numbered as 25000 - 25499.  Another 440 cars in series 25500 - 25939 were delivered in 1942.   In 1968 there were still 580 of these hoppers on the LV roster, but only six remained when the LV became part of Conrail.