This review appeared in O Gauge Railroading Magazine, August, 1998. Reproduced with permission of The Myron J. Biggar Group.

THREE BAY CYLINDRICAL HOPPER

Atlas O’s First Rolling Stock

Atlas O three-bay cylindrical hopper car: plastic freight car with internal weight; die-cast metal sprung trucks and couplers; supplied ready for 3-rail operation but convertible to 2-rail with optional retrofit kit (wheelsets and couplers); minimum curve 031 (but see text below); length 13.75"; weight 1 pound, 4 ounces; retail price $49.95; manufactured in China by Atlas O LLC, 603 Sweetland Ave, Hillside NJ 07205; phone 908-687-9590, fax 908-687-6282; web site: www.atalsO.com.

With this first offering in its new line of freight cars, Atlas O has raised the bar. The level of detail is truly astonishing, and the car runs flawlessly. How appropriate that the prototype for this covered hopper was equally exciting in its time.

Prototype

Covered hoppers are used to carry dry bulk commodities that must be protected from the weather, like grain, cement, fertilizer and a variety of granular or powdered chemicals. Until the early 1960s, the typical covered hopper was little more than a coal hopper with a roof. Product was loaded through roof hatches and unloaded by gravity through doors in the floor. Like most freight cars of their era, these cars had a center sill. This support beam ran down the middle of the car between the left and right sets of unloaded doors, and that led to problems in emptying the car. Typically some of the load would cake or "bridge" on the center sill, and the car would have to be vibrated to loosen the mess and achieve full unloading. And of course the vibration tended to shorten the life of the car.

All that changed in 1961 when American Car and Foundry introduced the first center-flow covered hopper. ACF moved the car’s support sills to the outside so they would no longer inhibit unloading. Between the sills, ACF placed a body with an elongated cylindrical (teardrop) shape that helped the load flow from unloading doors placed along the centerline of the car. In addition, at 3,500 cubic feet this car had nearly twice the capacity of many of the rectangular-style covered hoppers it replaced. Some of these original center flows are still running today, although over the years they have been superseded by similar designs with higher capacities.

The Atlas model represents an early model three-bay center flow manufactured from 1962 through 1966, which had six roof hatches for loading its three internal bays and three floor outlets for unloading.

Appearance

If highly detailed freight cars appeal to you, you’ll find this one drop-dead gorgeous. Atlas has set a new standard for detail in a plastic ready-to-run O gauge car. The most striking feature is the see-through open grate roof walks, which are very prominent on this car. Poking at the well-detailed roof hatches, I discovered they actually open. At each end of the roofwalk are separately applied grab irons that are really strong-there’s no worry about detail pieces falling off this car during operation. On one end there’s a brake system with air pipes and brake rods. Moving down toward the underbody, you’ll find more separately applied grab irons, end steps and a detail piece called a bolster strap above each trunk.

The paintwork is equally impressive and detailed. Paint is smooth and blemish-free, lettering is very crisp, and registration between colors is flawless. There is extensive lettering on the end panels of the cylindrical body, and lettering on the sides and bottom of the cylinder that must be read with a magnifier (which reveals the lettering to be perfectly sharp). Atlas has really sweated the details to produce a great model that shows what O gauge is capable of.

For modelers wanting to paint their own, Atlas also offers its cars undecorated, with some parts not yet attached in order to make the car easier to paint and decal. According to Jim Weaver at Atlas, the company plans to keep all painted versions constantly instock, depending on the popularity of various road names. As with the Atlas HO and N gauge lines, each time a car is rerun the car number will be changed. The initial run of covered hoppers included two road numbers for each paint scheme.

Performance

This car is delivered truly ready to run – properly weighted to hug the rails and with trucks that need no lubrication.

The trucks are fine models of a 100-ton roller bearing type. Detail is excellent: separate springs, and separate brake shoes set behind the side frames so as to be even with the wheels. The axles have needlepoint ends that ride in Delrin bearings set into the side frames, so the trucks are free-rolling and never need lubrication.

The couplers are truly designed to please operators. They couple easily without undue force, and they stay coupled. We put two Atlas hoppers just behind the engine at the head of a 23-car train of MTH aluminum 70’ passenger cars – that’s a heavy train – and experienced no accidental uncoupling.

When desired, uncoupling can be accomplished via a standard Lionel-type uncoupling track or by a hand tab on the coupler. The thumbtack-type coupler armature is held in the closed position by a metal coil spring, so uncoupling operation is reliable and should not deteriorate with use. The coupler is also articulated from the truck, with a spring-loaded return-to-center, to help the car track better on curves. In our tests, the Atlas couplers mated easily with couplers from Weaver, MTH and Lionel (both post-war and modern-era).

Atlas plans to sell these trucks separately with an adapter kit to make the trucks attach from the bottom on Lionel, K-Line or MTH cars. Currently many cars from those manufacturers have trucks attached from inside the car, an odd situation that requires disassembling the car for maintenance or truck replacement. The Atlas adapter will only require disassembling the car once to install the adapter. With their relatively low bolster height, the Atlas trucks may be particularly appropriate for improving the looks of cars that tend to ride high, such as K-Line intermodal cars.

There will also be a 2-rail conversion kit consisting of a pair of body-mount couplers and four turned-brass wheelsets. The 3-rail coupler must be unscrewed from the truck and wheelsets exchanged by disassembling the truck with a small screwdriver.

We’ve stated above that the minimum radius for these cars is 031. In fact they can be snaked around 027 curves, but the levers on the bottom hatch doors catch the switch machine on current-production Lionel 027 switches. They negotiate Lionel 031 switches perfectly.

Finally, even the packaging for this car has been well though out. A window box with a Styrofoam insert makes it easy to view the contents, while providing excellent and fully re-usable protection for the car.

With this first rolling stock offering in its new product line, Atlas has struck an excellent balance between durability and level of detail. And the car runs beautifully. This is a great example of the potential of O gauge and a truly exciting new product.