Here's a photo of the latest railcar fresh out of my paint shop. I started with an out of production Bowser hopper that I found on eBay. Bowser made these in a few different configurations. Some have the correct number of roof hatches (six), but I accidentally got one with five roof hatches. So I made up for the discrepancy by giving it a slightly fictitious road number.

This was a fairly easy kitbash. All I had to do was cut apart the end platforms, preserving the ladders and brake gear, which I then glued in their appropriate locations. The roof walk has to be cut apart and shortened as well. The tricky parts were the stanchions and unique grab irons. I used .03 x .03 styrene strip for the uprights because it was the smallest size that I could drill accurately with a #79 very tiny bit. I built a jig to space the holes accurately, then set up my NWSL chopper to cut them to the exact length, with one cut aligned exactly dead center over the top hole in the stanchion, so that the top of it is just a slot. I then built a bending jig for some fine brass wire that I had in my fly tying kit. The wire fits through the bottom hole in the upright, then bends at a right angle and goes straight up the length of the upright, then goes into the really cool looking loop, the bottom of which fits into the slot at the top of the upright.

I used Microscale decals from the ARR general freight set, and some data from another set. The data isn't correct, but it hardly matters in N scale anyway. Your excellent website has several photos in different paint schemes. It seems that the "load limit line for cement" was added to these cars at a later date, I used a stripe from another Microscale set.

As far as weathering goes, I went with a light spray of thinned white to fade the lettering. I may decide later to torture this car a little more. I like the photo of #14500 in front of ABI in Fairbanks. The lettering has completely worn off, and the car is completely covered with surface rust.