Caught a westbound mixed freight at triskett, normal stuff, when I saw a n.s. ballest hopper, it caught my eye but as it got closer, I noticed 1 erie lakawana hopper pretty faded away and 2 more after the ballest hopper in much better conditon! I didn't get the builder's date and don't know if I got the number or not but is this a rare catch?
Today, there was a whole string of Erie and Erie Lackawanna covered hoppers on a siding by where I live. They were dropped off by a a SD40T-2 in OHCR paint.
EL is a reporting mark owned by NS, so don't be surprised to see some EL cars floating around. It's just like the Conrail coal hoppers sporting PRR or NYC reporting marks.
i doubt if you'll find hoppers on ns with prr or pc marks. in the early 2000s ns declared it had a surplus of cars and sold much of the former conrail fleet for scrap. they literally chewed through hundreds of older conrail cars in the scrapyard while i was working with the railroad. about the only conrail hoppers left are the ones hollidasburg built in the 1990s. i am surprized the e-l ones survive, but i guess they make good ballast hoppers. and, being built around 1974, they are some of the newest 70 ton 3 bay hoppers around.
the nyc mark used by csx is something a bit different. in the conrail split, cars destined for csx were restencilled nyc as a way to keep them seperate from the cars going to ns. very few cars with nyc marks actually were owned by new york central, and many of the surviving new york central cars would up on ns working under pc or cr marks.
I'm quite aware of that. When they split up Conrail NS acquired the PRR and EL reporting marks, and CSX the NYC ones.