Here is a nice in service photo of “class car” B&O 831000, part of B&O class N-48, which was a total of 45 PS4000 covered hopper cars built August 1963.
These cars were delivered with gravity pneumatic gates like the 831013 builder photo seen here.
Photos of some of these PS4000s during and after the Chessie era show the pneumatic outlets removed, like the photo of 831000 above. This should be an easy one-night modeling project – snip or carve off the pneumatics, sand clean, repaint, and weather.
According to B&O diagrams two additional cars were purchased from ACL in 1964 and numbered 831045 and 831046.
B&O historian Stephen Phillips posted a great quote to the B&O yahoo group from actual B&O source documents that talked about how B&O assigned these cars, at least as of May 1966: “The 45 cars in this group are now assigned to pools and are restricted to specific products. They primarily handle sugar, feed, brewer’s grits, and soybean meal.” Date: May, 1966.
Click here for a link to photos of the Tangent Scale Models B&O PS4000s. Get them while they are available!
