• Road Name: Reading Blue Mountain & Northern
• Road Number: 7751, 7762
• Product Line: Premier
• Scale: O Scale
• System: 2-Rail

Features:

• Intricately Detailed Durable ABS Body
• Metal Wheels and Axles
• Die-Cast 4-Wheel Trucks
• Colorful, Attractive Paint Schemes
• Operating Die-Cast Metal Couplers
• Fast-Angle Wheel Sets
• Needle-Point Axles
• 1:48 Scale Dimensions

Overview:

The Coalporter is one of the latest evolutions in the more-than-150-year history of the American coal hopper. But technically speaking, its not a hopper. Itsa high-sided gondola, because it lacks the bottom-opening doors that characterize a true hopper. The only way to unload a Coalporter is to turn it upsidedown, which is exactly what happens at the rotary unloading facilities at factories and power plants served by Coalporter trains.

The Coalporter was developed by Bethlehem Steel Car in 1978, in an effort to create a higher-capacity, more efficient coal car. The traditional bottom hopperswere replaced by twin tubs, or troughs, that filled the space between the trucks. These increased the cubic capacity of the car and gave the added advantageof a lower center of gravity for better tracking. These original Coalporters were steel-bodied, but a drop in aluminum prices in the mid-1980s opened thedoor to the introduction of the aluminum-bodied BethGon Coalporter in 1985.

The switch to aluminum shaved five tons off the cars weight meaning that each car could carry five tons of additional payload, or an additional 575 tonsof coal in a typical Coalporter unit train. Coalporters generally operate in solid unit trains. One end of each car is equipped with a rotary coupler, to allow atrain to be fed through a rotary unloader without uncoupling the cars. Our highly detailed Premier model duplicates this prototype feature and also offersseparately added metal grab irons and a removable coal load.