The H42 and H44 are nearly exact duplicates. The H42 is a 3510 cuft car built by American Car & Foundry around 1963 and 1964. PRR purchased their H42's during October-December 1963. The EL purchased their 25 cars in October 1964. NYC also purchased the ACF CF3510 but I don't know the dates yet.These cars eventually found their way into Penn Central and Conrail. From what I can tell, there are no variations between any of these roads' cars other than paint schemes. Conrail considers these cars to be 3500cuft cars.
Between 1964 and 1965, ACF built a variation of their 3510 using a 50 degree slope sheet instead of the typical 45 degree sheet. This resulted in a few inch increase in car length and an increase in capacity to 3700 cuft. The PRR purchased this model between August and September 1964 and assigned it the class H44. They were the only predecessor to purchase the CF3700.
The main spotting difference between H42 and H44 covered hoppers is that the H42 has 11 roofwalf supports on the hopper section, while the H44 has 9.
Paint Schemes
Conrail: There are three major H42/H44 CR paint schemes I know of: oxide with large logo, gray with medium-sized logo, and gray with very small logo. Generally speaking, the large logo is the original CR paint scheme since 1976. The small logo scheme has been applied since at least 1986. The medium logo has been applied since at least the mid-80s as well.Predecessors: From 1976 to the late 1980's, the H42's and H44's ran in original schemes from PRR, NYC, PC, and EL, along with various CR 'paint-outs.' By the late 1990's, however, the number of cars in original schemes had drastically dwindled. For example, in 1996 there were only two PRR H44's still in service.
Rosters
The detailed rosters below are based on a January 1977 and an October 1991 Official Railway Equipment Register and reflect those roadnames that were in service at that time. I have made every effort to check them for accuracy, though cars that were taken off roster might still appear in service several years later. Plus, many errors crept into Conrail rolling stock fleet over the years. Please use these rosters only as a guide, combining them with photographic evidence.During the early years of the railroad, as reflected in the 1977 rosters below, Conrail had higher priorities than repainting their massive freight car fleet. As a result, there were usually more freight cars still numbered and lettered for the predecessors than for Conrail. At the end of every line in the rosters below is the total number of cars in that series that were lettered and numbered in that particular roadname. Often we do not know which cars these were, nor do we know if they were total repaints or simply stencil jobs. This applies primarily to Conrail and Penn Central cars, since they had cars belonging to their predecessor roads.
If you compare the following series of Conrail numbered H44's (CR 884665-884843) in the 1977 roster to the same series of cars in the 1991 roster, you will notice that during the 1980's and 1990's numerous H42's were placed in it. This made creating an accurate 1991 H44 roster nearly impossible to create. Instead of making mistakes, I have opted not to include CR numbered H44's in the 1991 roster. I have also found the H44 roster published in a February 1997 issue in Railroad Model Craftsman is also wrong. You will need to rely on photographic evidence for correct numbering.
January 1977 Series Class Total =============================== CR 884577-884641 H42 1 CR 884642-884664 H42A 1 CR 884665-884843 H44 2 CR 884844-884850 H44A 0 CR 885020-885300 H44 6 EL 20000-20024 ---- 25 PC 884900-884988 H42 26 PC 884989-885018 H42A 9 PC 885019-885304 H44 102 PC 885305-885314 H44A 2 PC 885540 H44 1 PRR 260001-260089 H42 60 PRR 260091-260120 H42A 20 PRR 260121-260410 H44 168 PRR 260411-260419 H44A 7 October 1991 Series Class Total ================================ CR 884560-884665 H42 6 CR 884667-884668 H42 2 CR 884672 H42 1 CR 884675 H42 1 CR 884680-884684 H42 5 CR 884689 H42 1 CR 884691 H42 1 CR 884693 H42 1 CR 884693 H42 1 CR 884700-884702 H42 3 CR 884717-884720 H42 4 CR 884723 H42 1 CR 884725 H42 1 CR 884729 H42 1 CR 884733 H42 1 CR 884741 H42 1 CR 884745 H42 1 CR 884747 H42 1 CR 884749 H42 1 CR 884753 H42 1 CR 884759 H42 1 CR 884761 H42 1 CR 884767-884768 H42 2 CR 884773-884774 H42 2 CR 884776 H42 1 CR 884779 H42 1 CR 884781-884786 H42 6 CR 884789 H42 1 CR 884789 H42 1 CR 884791 H42 1 CR 884793-884795 H42 3 CR 884797 H42 1 CR 884802-884803 H42 2 CR 884805-884806 H42 2 CR 884810-884811 H42 2 CR 884814 H42 1 CR 884816-884817 H42 2 CR 884819 H42 1 CR 884822 H42 1 CR 884826-884827 H42 2 CR 884831-884832 H42 2 CR 884836-884838 H42 3 CR 884842 H42 1 CR 885301-885311 H42 11 CR 885316 H42 1 CR 885321 H42 1 CR 885324 H42 1 CR 885328 H42 1 CR 885330 H42 1 CR 885333 H42 1 CR 885335-885336 H42 2 CR 885370 H42 1 CR 885373 H42 1 CR 885377-885378 H42 2 CR 885387-885388 H42 2 EL 20000-20024 ---- 2 PC 885237 H44 1 PRR 26001-260089 H44 3 PRR 260091-260118 H42A 1 PRR 260121-260410 H44 5