For the last installment of a series on modern cars here is another HO conversion done by the late Bill Johann. It was featured in the May, 1994 issue of The OO Road.

The key to this conversion was that the original three bay covered hoppers in the 1960s were under 4.500 cubic ft capacity and the newest ones today are over 5,000 cubic feet. This means that a very large HO covered hopper is a pretty good stand in for a small covered hopper in OO. This one I believe is by InterMountain, although the text of his article is not totally clear on this point.

Behind it in the photo is a Schorr two bay cement hopper. This is right on the money for OO and you can see that it looks just a bit larger in scale, but still the large HO car is a good stand in for an OO car.

For a very recent article on the topic of the evolution of covered hopper design see the May, 2009 issue of Model Railroader, especially the photos on page 62.

This and the previous two posts were saved as drafts before hitting the road to a conference. Due to some quirk of the blogging software they are all showing up as posts from the day I did the drafts. The modern cars are outside my normal era of operations but sure run well and are great cars to put on the layout to show the average visitor the layout in action.

After the conference I will be driving back through Colorado! I plan to stop at the Colorado Railroad Museum and check out the prototypes for those Sn3 trucks a few posts ago, will be a nice treat on my long drive home.