The most numerous Conrail Hopper through the first decade and highly relevant into the 1990s.

The most detailed open hopper in HO Scale: 187 parts per car.

The most detailed trucks in HO Scale: 21 pieces per truck.

About the Prototype:

The Committee Design hopper is one of the all-time, most important open hoppers on the Conrail railroad. Conrail rostered so many Committee Design cars that the railroad initially abandoned its early attempts to standardize around 100 ton conveyances. In 1986, the Committee Design hopper was still the most numerous coal hopper by class on Conrail's roster. In 1990, CR had 4,900 Committee Design hoppers, and although it was no longer the most numerous, it was still among the most significant car classes. By 2000, Conrail Committee design cars began to dwindle in number, Conrail Committee Design cars remained on roster into the new millennium.

History:

The Committee Design car was developed as a joint effort between the Pennsylvania, Norfolk & Western and Chesapeake and Ohio railroads. Production was between July of 1958 and September of 1962. Although it happened to be the case that all three of these railroads owned a version of the Committee Design car, it was the characterizing car of the Pennsylvania Railroad roster.

Across 15 lots and 5 builders, the PRR rostered 16,160 hoppers. These cars passed through Penn Central in massive quantities–such that: when Penn Central became Conrail in 1976, 15,087 Committee Design cars went into Conrail ownership. If you model the railroads of the Northeast from 1958 through the 1980s, the Committee Design Hopper isn’t an important hopper car–it is THE important hopper car.

If you want to learn more about this prototype, read Blaine Hadfield's / Arrowhead's article in the Winter 2023, Volume 19, Issue 1 edition of Conrail Quarterly, the official publication of the Conrail Historical Society. Also, see the book Pennsylvania Railroad Steel Open Hopper Cars by John Teichmoeller, and the article in the September 1990 Mainline magazine by Andrew Dow entitled 'The 70 Ton Standard Car of 1958'.

About the Paint Scheme:

Arrowhead Models is offering the Conrail Committee Design hopper in 12 road numbers and 3 unique paint schemes–all of which are a subtle variation of the standard diagram: red cars with standard reporting marks, road numbers and CR emblem. The difference between these schemes is that they have different Hollidaysburg shop locations, dates and small variations in the COTS, ACI and capacity data.

Conrail's Committee Design cars are of Pennsylvania Railroad heritage, and each car bears the correct PRR road number near the trust stencil per the Penn Central’s practice of documenting original ownership.

We didn't rest on those laurels, we artwork is extensively researched--and quite possibly, the most in depth in the industry. We compared data against our own field notes of extant Conrail Committee Design cars (Yes, they still exist!). This is not a manufacturer's quick take, we worked with the Conrail Historical Society and procured our own photographs and data of CR cars over a period of 5 years!