With the need for higher capacity coal hoppers, railroads turned to new designs in the 1980's and 1990's. In 1978, Bethlehem Steel Car, which had been renamed Johnstown-America Corp, produced the first prototype Coalporter. Among other improvements over the traditional 100-ton hopper, Coalporters eliminated the bays, replacing them with higher capacity toughs. This structural change classified these new cars as gondolas since the cars need to be rotated on their sides to dumped out the coal.In 1980, BSC introduced a lighter version of the Coalporter, which won favor with western railroads and utilities since they needed thousands of new cars for the booming Powder River Basin coal business. Seeing the Coalporter trends, Trinity began producing near-clone Coalporters. By the 1990's, the coal car of choice was the Coalporter. The traditional hopper was dead.
During the mid-to-late 1990's, several major designs of Coalporters were produced. There were 'Eastern' versions, usually made of steel, and 'Western' versions, usually made of aluminum. Steel cars generally had more traditional side-ribs, whereas aluminum cars generally had more 'blockish' ribs--a major spotting feature for those cars. As the 1990's progressed, CSX and Norfolk Southern began adopting the aluminum Coalporters. At the same time, Conrail remained faithful to the steel Coalporter until the end of the railroad.
Other railroads and utilities purchased their cars new from BSC, but Conrail decided to rebuild its vast, aging hopper fleet. Conrail rebuilt their first series of Coalporters in 1990, using kits from BSC and old predecessor 12-panel hoppers. The result was 300 brand-new, 11-panel, steel Coalporters that Conrail placed in series CR 503001-503300.
In 1991, Conrail converted more hoppers into 11-panel steel G52L and G52R Coalporters, which are nearly identical. Conrail continued the steel trend with their G52X series in 1997 but changed the design to 12-panel stainless steel. They also purchased former SFIX hoppers, upgraded them to 286,000GRL at Johnstown, and rebuilt them into G52W Coalporters; these were painted black.
Electronic Air Braking System Testing (EABS)
Even though the Electronic Air Braking System (EABS) had been developed in 1991 by a US firm known at the time as Technical Services Marketing, Conrail did not start testing the system until the summer of 1996, when Rockwell took control of TSM. Simply stated, the EABS individually applied the brakes to every car of a train at the same time via an electronic brake signal. This allowed the train to stop smoothly and in 30%-70% less distance than traditional air brake equipped trains. EABS also improved train safety and reduced maintenance costs. Today, such systems are standard, but in the mid-1990's they were revolutionary.For its test trains, Conrail chose two unit-Coalporter trains that were operating in Eastern Pennsylvania. One train had cars with yellow painted ends, while the other train had orange painted ends. (Unfortunately, I no longer remember which two trains these were.) The photo in the upper left corner of the page is a car from one of the trains.
How did the EABS braking work? Simply stated, each of the two EABS equipped trains had a device called the Head End Unit (HEU) in the lead locomotive of that train. In 'full electronic' mode, which required all cars in the train to be EABS equipped, the engineer used the HEU to apply the brakes. The HEU then electronically and simultaneously transmitted this information via intercar connectors to Car Control Units (CCU), which were mounted on every car's braking system. The CCU's adjusted the brake cylinder pressure accordingly until the HEU issued a different command. Every car then braked the same amount at the same time.
The photo to the left shows the intercar connector (the gray, flat box) and the cable system. The CCU isn't visible in this photo. However, Conrail mounted the unit deep under the brake-end slope sheet near the air reservoir. The unit was a box about 8" wide by 6" high and maybe 4" deep. The readout area on the front used red LED's to display the amount of air pressure the car was receiving in its brakes. Cables attached in the back ran to the intercar connector. When Conrail finished their testing, they removed the systems from the cars and placed the train back into regular unit coal service. Eventually, the cars were assigned to other unit coal trains and general merchandise service. They retained their orange or yellow ends, with some cars never having their Car Control Units removed.
Conrail Coalporter Roster
Many years ago, several contributors compiled this roster for Conrail's Coalporters, which were all built in the 1990's. They corrected many errors that had appeared in rosters published back then.
CR Series Class Build Dates Notes
=============================================
503001-503300 G52H 01/91 - 09/91 1
503301-504800 G52L ??/91 - ??/91 2
504801-506400 G52L/G52R 01/92 - 08/92 3
506401-507400 G52R 12/92 - 05/93
507401-508000 G52X 07/97 - 08/97 4
508001 **** ***** ***** 5
508002-508601 G52W ??/97 - ??/97 6
Roster Notes:
1. 11-panel steel cars. These are the same length as the G52L and G52R but 11" shorter.
2. 11-panel steel cars.
3. These G52L's differ from other G52L's in that their sides, end plates, and corner caps are like the G52R, but the side sills are like other G52L's. At least one of these G52's has Reading-style reinforcements on the side plate. Though according to the trucks and stencil, this car is a former H43D before it was rebuilt into a Coalporter. It appears that the first 400 cars of this series are G52L's.
4. 12-panel stainless steel cars.
5. Number left vacant.
6. Former SFIX (System Fuels, Inc.) hoppers rebuilt by Conrail into Coalporters.