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Cars for Fracking Sand in N Locos and rolling stock
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Regular poster 465 posts LensCapOn Regular poster 465 posts
LensCapOn

Train loads of fracking sand (all Battlestar Galactica fans are now snickering) has become quite the thing in contemporary railroading.

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Modeling this in N is a bit harder as the selection of models for current cars is less than optimal. The closest I can find are cars that first appeared in the mid/late 1960's.

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Is there something I have missed? Do not want to cut down Trinity 5181's or Gunderson 5188's. Since they also seem to use old, tired, grain cars the logic forced by available cars could have me using one of the first gen PS-2 triple hoppers with the round hatches.

 

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Anything to offer or are these my choices?
Reply 3
Chris VanderHeide cv_acr Super User 2,349 posts
Chris VanderHeide cv_acr

Trinity

The modern TrinityRail cars pictured in the top photo have been done in HO, but I think they haven't hit N yet.

Some of the older two-bay cars have also been used in this type of service, but it kind of depends on where the stuff is coming from, since most of the cars are leased, they're kinda controlled by the shippers.

The small "first-gen" 3-bay hoppers would not be appropriate since they're a) too old to still be in service andb) lower weight capacity. The 2-bay cars shown are '70s+ cars and some could still be in service.

Chris van der Heide

My Algoma Central Modelling Blog

Canadian Freight Car Gallery

CPR Sudbury Division (Waterloo Region Model Railway Club)
Reply 3
kh25 Regular poster 222 posts
kh25
When frac sand became a thing in Central Pa around 2012, sand showed up in all sorts of 2 and 3 bay covered hoppers. There were a lot BN, Atsf and BNSF 4750 type covered hoppers. Then Winchester and Western 3 bay covered hoppers started showing up.
Mark Kingsbury
Reply 3
Peter Pfotenhauer Regular poster 362 posts
Peter Pfotenhauer
Trainworx has a PD3000 model you can still find at shows. A couple are left on their website. It could be used for fracking sand. Maybe the new Atlas 2 bay version of the PD5600 could too, but I am not sure about that.  N scale covered hopper variety is still rather limited, especially on the modern end.
Reply 3
Chris VanderHeide cv_acr Super User 2,349 posts
Chris VanderHeide cv_acr
Peter Pfotenhauer wrote:
Trainworx has a PD3000 model you can still find at shows. A couple are left on their website. It could be used for fracking sand. Maybe the new Atlas 2 bay version of the PD5600 could too, but I am not sure about that.  N scale covered hopper variety is still rather limited, especially on the modern end.
Sand isn't shipped in pressure cars.

Chris van der Heide

My Algoma Central Modelling Blog

Canadian Freight Car Gallery

CPR Sudbury Division (Waterloo Region Model Railway Club)
Reply 3
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