coilcars

coilcars Coil Cars....
Coil cars come in two main types. First are the modified gondolas. Each railroad had some and the WM used exclusively modified gondolas to haul coiled steel. This was the original way to haul coiled steel. To differentiate Chessie classed gondolas starting with "G" and coil carrying modified gondolas with "CS". See the CS-16 below for an example.

The C&O however was instrumental in designing from the ground up a purpose made coil car. 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. These coil cars were all "CS" classes.

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)

CS-16 Class (305000-305059, 305084-305085)
C&O 305012 (Custom painted and decaled by me. This is a car used to haul coiled steel, but it was not not built from the ground up like the classes above, it is a modified gondola.)

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.