Pink Covered Hoppers Collecting Iowa's Private Owned Hopper Series

Scroll down for photos of the process for custom building West Bend, Ralston-Jefferson and Woodward, Iowa

Models of Private Owned Iowa Hoppers from Albert City to Woodward:

Albert City PS2 was part of Athearns' limited run blue box 12 pak kit

Rich Grain Service of Chester, IA was also part of the 12 pak.

Creston, Ia is out of production from Athearn, but decals can be purchased from
Oddballs decals, using a 17 panel ribside PS2 hopper.  The latter is represented here.

Dallas Center is Coming soon from Intermountain.

Dickens IA is an Intermountain RTR car.   Start the Bob and Tom jokes...

Eagle Grove/Boone Valley Coop was originally released by Athearn in correct paint as a PS2 blue box kit.  They have re-released it as an FMC RTR in dark navy blue paint.

Farnhamville has been done several times by Athearn and Roundhouse, and re-released again by Athearn.  This is an original MDC kit.

Fremont is currently available in Athearn RTR.

Hamburg IA, aka "Goodseed Grain & Co" was a Bev-Bel /Athearn kit, but the letters are pretty big and look toyish on the model.  Oddballs makes a kit that has more realistic lettering.

Athearn's latest release of Klemme Coop has patched CNW reporting marks.   This was a very limited run RTR car.

I've never seen Intermountain's version of the Klemme car, which strangely has no "GRAIN" and is a PS2 car.

Mid Iowa Coop was a Roundhouse/MDC kit.

Northwood was part of Athearns limited run 12 pak.  Every now and then it pops up for sale on Ebay.

Percival Grain is shown here in Athearns' new RTR FMC version...

However, their original version of it with lighter paint and in PS2 may have been more accurate?

Here's a limited edition version of Percival with really faded paint and CNW patching.

Pomeroy-Knoke was part of Athearn's limited run twelve pack kits.

Ralston-Jefferson was done with a stripped Intermountain PS2, painted and lettered with Herald King decals.

West Bend was another Intermountain strip, with discontinued West Bend decals from IS

Woodward was located on the former Milwaukee Road main, this car was lettered using discontinued IS decals.

  Here are a handful of Nebraska hoppers I found at a local dive... these are MDC

A couple more MDC kits from Nebraska....

I recently re-worked a set of Intermountain hoppers when I found a set of decals for Woodward, West Bend and Ralston-Jefferson.  Here is the "before" picture, with a plain white UP "Sugar" hopper.

  The decals were stripped, and the hoppers were spray-painted.... uh.... pink....

  Woodward, IA was represented with this re-worked Intermountain car.

Finally, West Bend was painted and decalled.  Nobody has offered these cars in HO scale, however, Con Cor has offered West Bend and Ralston Jefferson in N scale.