All Bluford Shops cars come ready-to-run with magnetically operating knuckle style couplers, and super-fine details.

Rio Grande Limestone Service 14-Panel 3-Bay Hopper. This group of cars was built for Rio Grande by ACF in 1958 ostensibly for coal service. Later in life, a portion of the fleet was reassigned to limestone loading (note the diagonal stencil below the “D” in the reporting marks.) This limestone was used in the steel-making process. One of the sources of limestone was Rio Grande’s Monarch Branch which was narrow gauge until the late fifties when it was standard gauged. At first, drop bottom gondolas were used in this service but they were replaced with older hoppers like these as the gons wore out. These models will come with “limestone” loads instead of the usual coal loads.