Received the latest Athearn release of the two-bay, offset side hoppers with the road name in RR Roman and the red Anthracite herald. While the ladder rungs and grab irons hark back to the Blue Box days the use of metal wheel set with metal axles is a plus, especially when adding resistors for detection. The axle bushing on the inside of the wheel is of larger diameter than found on most insulated axles. As Blue Box was mentioned, these hoppers have finer dimension than their Blue Box predecessors with thinner top rails and the car body wall thickness appears (Where did I hide the calipers from myself?) thinner. Setting them beside a Blue Box car, their overall appearance is noticeably better. Coming with scale couplers was another plus; these couplers worked well with Kadee couplers on the test track. the removable coal loads are for a fine sized coal and a bit too close to the top of the sides for my liking. A few swipes across a sheet of coarse sandpaper will correct this. The addition of slope sheet braces, the train line and a trip through the paint shop for weathering will have these ready for the layout.

I just went to Athearn's site to look at the cars. they are selling them as 2 different sets of 4 cars and 1 single car. the lettering on them looks accurate except that they are all lettered as class HTu, blt 10-49.of the 9 car numbers only 1 car #82462 is a HTu. all the rest are class HTv. and there are no cars listed on the rolling stock reference file on this site that were built in 10-49. also one car number #86929 never existed.the HTv numbers ended with #86699 and restarted with #87000. for the purist modelers there would have to be some relettering of the car class, and renumber one complete car.
Butch Curll