C6 100 ton 2970 cubic foot ACF covered hopper car for cement service, Light Gray.
Accurail

C6 100 ton 2970 cubic foot ACF covered hopper car for cement service, Light Gray.

Regular price $20.98 $0.00 Unit price per

HO scale, RTR with trucks and magnetic couplers.

Cement is a binder that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. The most common type, Portland cement, is made by roasting limestone, with other materials such as clay, to 2,640 degrees Fahrenheit in a kiln to form calcium silicates. Clinker from the kiln, plus a small amount of gypsum, is ground into a powder to make ordinary Portland cement, which is used to make concrete, mortar, and grout. Portland cement is very dense, weighing 85 pounds per cubic foot.

The first rail car specifically designed to transport the moisture sensitive commodities Portland cement and rock salt in bulk was the all-steel covered hopper car with a fixed roof with loading hatches. The first newly built railroad fleet was the Pennsylvania’s H30 design of 1935, a 70-ton car of 1973 cubic feet. In 1937 ACF introduced its 1958 cubic feet, nominal 70-ton capacity, design that would dominate the cement car market until the introduction of nominal 100-ton cars in the 1960s. Covered hopper cars were and are AAR car type LO, and 100-ton cars were GN car type code C6, regardless of cubic capacity.

In 1966 and 1967 the railway took delivery of 200 cars of 100-ton and 2970 cubic feet capacity from ACF. These cars were built to ACF’s ‘Center Flow’ design, which eliminated the traditional center sill which greatly improved unloading rate and reliability.

Our Accurail model is correctly numbered in series GN 173800-999, the 200 car lot of 1966-67. Great Northern was one of the first to purchase such cars. The GN cars had the ‘phase I’ body style with stiffening rib along the upper portion of the car side, and carried 30-inch round roof hatches. They were purchased to haul cement, bentonite clay, and silica sand. Significant volumes of cement were moving at the time to support Department of Defense contracts for air fields and missile silos in Montana and North Dakota, and to build Libby Dam in Montana.

The model is painted with the light gray body color that these cars were delivered in, and is appropriately stenciled with car number 173852 and the ‘Great Northern Railway’ herald. A few of these cars were repainted to Big Sky Blue by the Great Northern, evidently for publicity purposes.

This model fills an important niche in the Great Northern modeler’s car fleet. It is based on a mass produced prototype of its time.

This car is the only Great Northern 100-ton cement service covered hopper available.