According to NOAA, it’s 87 degrees outside. It’s 82 inside. Dear apartment complex, please decide to enable A/C some time soon. Thanks.

It’s been a good week, so far. Back to work on the new shift tonight (7pm to 3am, Wednesdays through Sundays), but progress has been made on various model related things this week.

Over the last few days I’ve been doing some research on a set of freight cars I have, and from what I can tell they are offset quad hoppers that were a real freight car – mildly surprising given my models of them were made by the likes of Tyco.

To be specific, I’m referring to the brightly colored open hoppers often used for coal or ballast on a model railroad made by companies to include Bachmann, AHM, Tyco and possibly others. They seem to be most closely matching to a 70 ton ARA hopper that was used by several railroads on the eastern side of the United States starting from the 20s and 30s and stayed in production in a few forms through the early 60s. I’ve found several photographs of them painted for B&O, Reading and one or two others, but not much more. I’ve also seen several model maker’s sites referring to Norfolk and Western and the Southern Railway having some (and operating them through at least the early 80s, which fits my loose era of the 80s and 90s on NS) but I am yet to see any photos of them at all. If I can find some, I can consider repainting them into more realistic colors and possibly add to my fleet of Southern hoppers.

Also on the N scale front I finally started building out the hills (expanding upward!) using paper and glue. They’re just now taking shape and perhaps next week I’ll be able to start laying plaster and making them solid.