Rapido Trains is excited to announce the “Enterprise” 2-bay covered hopper in the HO scale.

Covered hoppers started to become a major car style just prior to WWII and are one of the dominant car types on railroads today. Early development of covered hoppers tended to center around two-bay cars, with few mass-produced cars until the 1950s.

During the early development of covered hoppers, the New York Central built several different groups of “Enterprise” covered hoppers both for its own use and for its subsidiaries. The first groups were built immediately before World War II in 1939 and 1940. These cars proved quite successful, and in 1948 the NYC built another group of cars under Lot (the NYC’s classification system) number 747-H. The post-war cars were slightly larger than their predecessors with a 2000 cubic foot capacity. They utilized Standard Railway Equipment’s steel roof panels which had four offset roof hatches on each side versus the five hatches per side on the pre-war cars. An unknown number of these cars were fitted with smaller, circular hatches for flour and sugar loading.'

A total of 750 cars were built in Lot 747-H. They proved so successful that additional cars followed in Lots 783, 784 and 785. The later series differed in using diagonal panel roofs but were otherwise identical to the Lot 747 cars.

At the same time as the New York Central was building their Lot 747-H cars, the Canadian National also built 150 cars to largely the same design. These were also delivered in 1948. Although at first glance nearly identical, the CN cars differed from the NYC’s in the design of roof panels, side panels, hatch spacing and construction details. The CN’s cars remained in service for many years, with some being later converted to ballast cars for maintenance of way use.

Rapido is offering correct versions of both the New York Central Lot 747H cars and the CN’s home-built versions. 

The New York Central Enterprise Covered Hopper Cars would last well into Penn Central's tenure and cars would receive jade green or gray repaints. The jade green cars would be repurposed as company sand cars. The Canadian National cars remained in service for many years, with some being later converted to ballast cars for maintenance of way use.

The Rapido Trains HO scale Enterprise covered hoppers features:

•  ** Relaunced with new wire grab irons and ladders
• Designed from original blueprints and field measurements
• Both NYC and CN versions are available
• Fully detailed body and underframe
• Rapido semi-scale metal couplers
• Free-rolling trucks with turned metal wheels
• Accurate paint and decoration
• Multiple road numbers per scheme