The story of these 2-Bay Rebuilt War Emergency Hoppers begins in 1942 when the War Production Board directed car builders to substitute wood for steel wherever possible in car superstructures. The familiar 2-bay “war emergency” composite hopper was a result of this directive. Those cars had wooden side sheets and end slope sheets (although the middle slope sheets remained steel.) This saved a bit over two and a half tons of steel needed elsewhere for the war effort.

Unfortunately, the wood boards were considerably thicker than steel sheet which effectively lowered the cubic capacity of the car. While you could build ten composite hoppers with the steel of nine all-steel hoppers, the lower capacity of the composite cars meant you needed more composite cars to carry the same load.

During 1944, the directive was set aside and cars that were on order were delivered with the familiar diagonal bracing but with all steel construction. After the war, as composite cars came due for serious maintenance, the wood side and slope sheets were replaced with steel. A large majority of the composite cars were rebuilt in this manner sometime during the 1950s.

Southern Railway System acquired 1,450 composite hoppers during the war and rebuilt them into all steel cars in the 1950s. The block lettering was adopted in 1960. While many railroads went to great lengths to break up their lettering to avoid the vertical and diagonal ribs on these cars, Southern made stencils that carefully wrapped over the ribs. By 1969, the fleet had all been equipped with ACI tags.

Features:

• Fully assembled and ready to run
• Die cast slope sheet-hopper bay-center sill assembly
• Injection molded plastic sides, ends, and hopper doors
• Fully molded brake tank, valve and air lines
• Body mounted brake hose detail
• Load
• Body mounted magnetically operating knuckle couplers
• Close coupling
• Fox Valley Models metal wheels