Chicago & Illinois Western was a shortline with 33 miles of track serving a number of large industries in Harvester, Hawthorne, and Gary in the greater Chicago area.  Illinois Central took stock control of the C&IW in 1924 but the shortline remained a separate operation with their own locomotives and freight cars.  IC influence can be seen in the C&IW’s lettering style which is very similar to IC’s pre-1967 practices.  Speaking of which, the wonky spacing in the lettering is prototypical for these cars.  It looks as if they had all the stencils for “Chicago,” “Illinois,” and “Western” spaced perfectly and then realized they left out the “&.” 

Grand Trunk Western received 500 of these hoppers from American Car & Foundry in 1952.  While parent CN introduced their “noodle” logo in 1960, the GTW version appeared in 1962 and was applied to the now decade old hoppers as they were shopped.  GTW moved coal from connecting roads to power Michigan’s voracious auto industry, and also loaded significant quantities of gravel (for use in construction across the Industrial Midwest) on their Saginaw Subdivision.  This run comes with “coal” loads.  The loads can be easily painted if you prefer to model cars in gravel service.

Illinois Central was quite a fan of 3-bay offset side hoppers and continued to build them into the late ‘60s. In 1972, IC merged with the largely parallel Gulf Mobile & Ohio creating Illinois Central Gulf.  The combined railroad was immense with 9,500 route miles (about 60 more than Union Pacific during the same period.)  As the old IC hoppers were shopped during the ‘70s, they emerged in this scheme complete with then standard ACI bar codes and con-stencils.

Prior to 1953 the railroad popularly known as Milwaukee Road used their full name “Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul and Pacific” inside their familiar tilted rectangle logo.  Milwaukee Road became a major originator of coal traffic in 1921 with the acquisition of the Chicago Terre Haute Southeastern.  This extended Milwaukee’s reach into the coal mining regions of Southern Indiana.  In addition, MILW served mines in Iowa, Illinois, Montana and even Washington. 

First of all for those not familiar with this line, it’s PERE (pronounced like Pair, not Pierre as in South Dakota.  Pere is French for “Father.”)  Pere Marquette connected much of Michigan with Chicago, Toledo, and (via Southern Ontario) Buffalo, New York.  They also interchanged with Wisconsin roads via car ferries across Lake Michigan.  Sporting around 2,000 route miles, Pere Marquette was between Rio Grande and Nickel Plate Road in relative size.  In 1927, PM received 250 of these 3-bay offset side hoppers.  In 1947, Pere Marquette was merged into Chesapeake & Ohio.  However, due in part to its location and in part to the nature of equipment assignments during this era, there was little visible evidence that C&O had taken over for more than a decade!

Until 1960, Soo Line was the nickname of the Minneapolis St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railroad.  “Soo” came from the phonetic pronunciation of Sault. Soo connected a dense network of branches in North Dakota and Minnesota to connections with Canadian Pacific at Portal on the North Dakota border and Sault Ste. Marie near the tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  Soo had been controlled by CP since early in the 20th century.  For many years, Soo had embraced their nickname with Soo Line reporting marks and the square “dollar sign ” logo on freight cars. In 1951, they adopted this billboard style of lettering for freight cars.  In 1960, parent Canadian Pacific consolidated their U.S. lines including MStP&SSteM, subsidiary Wisconsin Central (which gave the old Soo their route to Chicago) and the Duluth South Shore & Atlantic.  The combined railroad (which used DSS&A’s charter) was renamed Soo Line Railroad.  These cars will have gravel loads instead of the usual coal loads reflecting their most common use on the Soo Line

Southern post-1960 3-bay offset side hoppers. Southern acquired these hoppers new in 1952. Beginning in 1960, the Southern fleet began to receive this style of large block lettering. Another major change was shifting from black paint on open top cars to mineral red. Often in coal service, these cars were also used for coke, sand, gravel, and unprocessed clay, particularly later in life. These hoppers will be coming with black coal/coke loads.

In the years following the Second World War, Rock Island finally emerged from a long reorganization and began buying new equipment.  500 70-ton offset side hoppers arrived in this paint scheme from American Car & Foundry in 1949.  Rock Island was unusual in that it completely straddled the imaginary line running from St. Louis through Kansas City to Denver.  This line divides railroads of the Northern Plaines such as Milwaukee Road, CB&Q, C&NW and others, and railroads of the Southern Plaines such as Frisco, M-K-T, MoPac and Santa Fe.  While some roads in one of these regions had tendrils into the other region (such as Santa Fe ’s line to Chicago) the vast majority of their mileage remained on one side of the line.  Rock Island was split more or less evenly over this border with extremities linking Minneapolis and Sioux Falls to the north, Denver and Tucumcari to the west, Dallas and southern Louisiana to the south, and connections with the Eastern trunk lines in Memphis, St. Louis, Peoria, and Chicago.

Central Railroad of New Jersey picked up a good size fleet of these 70 ton hoppers used from B&O and P&LE.  The cars in this run came from the B&O.  They were pressed into service hauling sand and gravel.  These hoppers will be coming with gravel loads.

This group of hoppers was built in 1965 by and for the Illinois Central.  What year they joined the United States Army (USAX) is in doubt, but we can say they received this combination of lettering in 1989 or shortly thereafter.  These cars are used to haul coal in small groups from mines to Army base power stations in through-coal and mixed manifest freights.

Chicago Burlington & Quincy (CB&Q) built thousands of these hoppers in their own Havelock Shops beginning in 1949.  Beginning in 1958, Burlington updated their image by shifting from boxcar red to Chinese red on their freight car fleet. The Q had considerable coal traffic for a “Granger” road. In addition, these cars were often found far from home rails moving coal and minerals to Southern New England, the South and Appalachia, in addition to “Everywhere West.”

Great Lakes Carbon leased 70 of these cars from US Railway Equipment in GLC produced calcined petroleum coke used in making furnace anodes for aluminum mills and producing titanium dioxide. Petroleum coke is a byproduct of oil refining and looks very much like coal.