Covered Hoppers

The Arizona Southern moves much of it's traffic as bulk commodities, cement, copper ore, and gravel are in the majority, but of these three only cement requires an enclosed car. While much of the cars doing the cement hauling come from the Southern Pacific, we also have quite a few of our own cars in this service. Many of them are hand me downs from other railroads, but every once in a while the bean counters allow us to purchase something that might pass for modern in certain circles. Case in point is our 100 ton cars. While these are few and far between, more seem to keep arriving all of the time.

This car was made back on the latter part of the 1980's, well before any shorter Pullman Standard covered hoppers were offered in plastic. Made from an Athearn Blue Box kit, the cost was fairly reasonable considering the time period.

Most of the home road cars are of the 70 ton variety, and are from several builders and many eras when one begins digging through the roster. 

I suppose it's fair to say that our lettering practices are patterned after SP's lettering schemes, but then again, why fix what is not broken? Case in point is this car.

This next car was also made in the earliest days of the Arizona Southern's journey, so old in fact it was one of half a dozen E&B Valley flat side kits that were built when those became available, great at the time, but a bit thick by today's standards, but I still am fond of this model, even the decals were pieced together from SP lettering; I made the Z from two N's.

Anyway, that's about all for now, thanks for looking and feel free to comment if the mood strikes.