Lite and Narrow Column - 6
steel cars in their own shops, 840-869. It isn’t clear if the EBT
licensed the design from PSC or just went ahead and cop-
ied them. The first 10 cars were a bit top-heavy so the EBT
stretched them to 28’ 2” which became the standard hopper
length for the railroad.
The following year, 1915, the EBT refined the design of the
three-bay hopper which became the standard hopper car for
the railroad. The two-bay hoppers stayed in their configuration
until the railroad completed the construction of the three-bay
hoppers in 1927. When that occurred, the railroad began to
rebuild the 1914 order to the three-bay configuration, leaving
only the 10 original cars as two-bay cars. In time these cars also
received modifications, with four of them receiving side-dump
doors and three receiving clamshell doors for slag service. The
railroad converted four of the cars to three-bay cars in the mid-
1940s. Although heavily rusted, these cars are still in existence
in the Mt. Union yard.
Modeling the two-bay cars can be easy, if you are in the right
scale. The original 10 cars are available from Funaro and
Camerlengo as a cast resin kit in HOn3. These are upgrades
from the original flat-casting kits and have a one-piece body,
making for much quicker construction. This is the 25’ 9” car.
Bachmann has offered this car in On30, which I have seen con-
verted to On3, but it is not available in the current catalog. To
the best of my knowledge, I have not seen these cars offered in
On3 or Sn3.
Two-bay short rock cars
In 1930, the East Broad Top built four short two-bay hopper
cars for rock service. Rock service on the EBT meant ganister
rock, which was used in the production of refractory brick by
brick producers in Mt. Union. The cars were 22’ long and 7’
7” wide, and had a 30-ton capacity. There were four numbers
8
8. East Broad Top Hopper 805 in the original lettering
scheme modeled in HOn3. This is the cast resin kit from
Funaro and Camerlengo. Funaro and Camerlengo photo.
7
7. Steel hopper car 809 with clamshell hoppers. The high
sulfur content of the Broad Top coal causes the heavy
rusting of the cars. Photo courtesy of BHI Publications.
MRH-Dec 2014
