coilcars
Coil Cars....
Now these are some neat cars. These cars really
say "Chessie". With the C&O and B&O having the biggest
and
second biggest fleets of them, they need to be modeled heavily on any
Chessie
railroad. Coil cars are actually specialized gondolas for
transporting coiled steel, but most Chessie fans recognize them as a
separate type of freight car. For the purposes of this website
the coil cars that were built from the ground up as coil cars are shown
here. The former gondolas that were modified to also carry coiled
steel are listed on the gondola page.
The Walthers kit is good, but on the older ones you will need to add
the
"C&O" or "B&O" decals on the ends of the hoods, like I did, to
be correct. You can find these as unassembled kits for around
$10. The yellow and blue rounded hood cars were made first by the
Chessie System Historical Society and are now also available through
Walthers. They have the "C&O" or "B&O" on the ends.
These are ready-to-run cars and are available for about $15-20 a
piece. They come unnumbered so you can decal them for any car in
the series.
The Red Caboose car is outstanding for the CS-14s, but at about $35 a
piece, they are very expensive. I have done only one due to the
price.
The cars in the photos below show typical hood
arrangments on
cars.
It was not unusual to see hoods from different railroads on C&O or
B&O cars. Shown below, one has a "ATSF" and one a "NYC"
hood. N&W seemed to be the most
common non-Chessie hood
on Chessie cars, but you would be right to put any road on a Chessie
car. The rest of the pics show numerous
other versions of
Chessie
hoods.
CS-12 Class (C&O 306000-306049, 306250-306359,
B&O
306050-306249)
Chessie C&O 306036 (Renumbered from a decorated kit)
Chessie B&O 306067 (Numbered from a unnumbered decorated kit)
Chessie B&O 306075 (Renumbered from a decorated kit)
Chessie B&O 306101 (Numbered from a unnumbered decorated kit)
Chessie B&O 306127 (Renumbered from a decorated kit)
Chessie B&O 306149 (Numbered from a unnumbered decorated kit)
Chessie B&O 306155 (Renumbered from decorated model to correct road
number)
Chessie B&O 306165 (Renumbered from decorated model to correct road
number)
Chessie B&O 306234 (Numbered from a unnumbered decorated kit)
Chessie C&O 306250 (Numbered from a unnumbered decorated kit)
Chessie B&O 306289 (Numbered from a unnumbered decorated kit)
Chessie C&O 306345 (Renumbered from decorated model to correct road
number)
CS-14 Class (B&O 306360-306409, C&O
306410-306709)
Chessie C&O 306696 (Purchased as a decorated Red Caboose ready to
run model)
Below are all of the types of coils and the different B&O and
C&O paint jobs seen on Chessie coil cars. Note the two
rounded types on the right compared to the angled types. I
have not seen any photos of the rounded ones in any of the predecessor
schemes. The blue Chessie System angled hoods have "B&O" or
"C&O" on the end, but I have only done two, so can't show both
sides and the end, like the others are displayed. Also the
Fiberglass hoods in front are rare, but did exist.
A close up of the ones with the Chessie Cat logos. Each stack
shows both sides and the ends. All the ones in the back came with
both B&O and C&O end lettering. I've only seen the
fiberglass with C&O letters. I'm not sure if the fiberglass
coil hoods had the Ches-C logo on the other side, I've only seen shots
of it showing "Chessie System" on the side.
A close up of the predecessor paint schemes. The grey ones
were older and were decorated differently on each side. They did
not have "B&O" or "C&O" on the ends.
The blue ones were in use just before the Chessie Era and were seen
throughout 1972-1986. I found a B&O blue one on a coil car in
Nashville in 2000! They are decorated the same on both
sides.
