Roanoke Rail walk

[NW Mailing List]

At 05:11 PM 2/1/07, you wrote:

>Those hoppers are VERY old, with the fishbelly sides and clamshell 

>doors.  I think that clamshells were on their way out by the 

>mid-20s.  IIRC, from Dow's book, almost all steel hoppers built with 

>clamshells were rebuilt with conventional hopper bottoms, losing their 

>fishbelly sides in the process, fairly early on.


  They're old, but not THAT old. Class H-1, late-'30s second-time rebuilds 
of N&W's original steel HM and HP hoppers built circa 1909-1915. They have 
flat-bottom doors, not clamshells.

David Thompson