Wood Hooper

Berkshire Valley Wood Hopper

I've been trying to resist buying one of the Berkshire Valley Models new wood hopper kits. I've been eyeing them for a while as they look really cool. Laser kits are rather quick to assemble and after starting my last Deerfield Laser Kit, see previous post, I jumped in. Why did I wait? Well, the kit is a very "western" version of an ore car and I model the east. Oh, well. It's cool and who knows what I will model in the future........

 When the kit arrived, I was impressed. A much better value than the Deerfield Laser Kit EBT car. The Berkshire Valley Models kit was literally, complete except trucks and couplers. Well, you could argue that it didn't include all brake rigging but no problem for me as I find most of that ends up causing running issues. So, a quick, and I mean, quick build, I have a nicely finished wood ore car. I made two modifications 1.) I added some rods to hold the car together vertically and 2.) I changed out the ladders with some I already had and liked better. I didn't realize that they sell weights to go with this kit but I did add my own weights on the underside of the end slope sheets. Also, I think most wood cars built with wood trusses used rods to hold the mortise and tenon joints together.  Here's the car with modified McCleod West Side Trucks 4ft wheel base, brake hangers removed. Cheers!

EBT Wood Hopper BM&S

 Deerfield Laser Kit: EBT Wood Hopper t in On3

A while ago I purchased a laser kit of an EBT Wood Hopper from Deerfield Laser. I made a few comments about the kit in my last post. I managed to get some better pictures of how these cars were updated so I changed the truss rod addition to be more like the prototype.

This was my initial guess how they did it. Kind of clunky

 

Here is what the photo's showed

I managed this week to get the car into the paint shop. I think it came out really nicely. Needs a little touch up on this end.

I think I'll purchase some BM&S trucks from Coronado to see how they look. The photo's I got clearly showed the BM&S trucks with the brake rigging hanging from the car rather than the trucks.

Finally, here is a shot of this kit next to one I scratch built in highschool. I'll update with better lighting this weekend. The scratch build model was built using other plans, which should explain in the increased height. It also uses the Coronado BM&S trucks with 20-inch wheels. Onto something else...........