Hey I've looked up a few more things, which means trouble.
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
The early RT3 covered hoppers are totally fictional. I always thought they looked stupid, and it's because somebody just made them up. Covered hoppers weren't in use before the 1930's. All cargoes that we're used to thinking of as covered hopper cargoes were carried in boxcars before then.
Freight Car Friday – USRA Standard Freight Cars
Note the lack of any flat, tank, stock, reefer, or covered hoppers from the list. Covered hoppers had not really come into vogue yet. Most of the commodities we now associate with them were hauled in boxcars in 1918.
70 Ton 2-Bay Covered Hopper
History: In the 1930's ACF introduced a new covered hopper which would allow bulk shipments of dry materials. Previously these were packaged and resulted in hand loading and unloading. These commodities included cement, dry chemicals, flour, grain, sand, sugar and many others. The first cars where shipped in October 1936 and had a capacity of 1958 cubic feet.
So really that's what we ought to have: boxcars before 1925 (just because of era change years) and ACF hoppers between 1925 and 1950. Which aint gonna happen right now, but should be on the to-do list for future improvements. TBH the RT3 hoppers are all wrong anyway, so really need a full revamp at some point.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anywayz, boxcars. I think the way to go is what's shown in the shot.
!Boxcars_roster_2.jpg
The 7 triple A era cars really are a bit much in terms of visuals with A era locomotives, but the way I figure it A era locos won't be hauling a full 7 cars + cabooose anyway. They usually do well with 4 or 5 car consists, which means triples will look good with them. Using triples also simplifies things in some ways. With the central unit being the body file a cargo icon be applied, and hovering the cursor over the body during gameplay brings up the cargo name. That's handy when the icon is too far away to be clearly visible, and is a bit of a fault with the double units.
The doubles have such a small body unit that it can be hard to target with the cursor, and hovering over the trucks doesn't bring up the cargo name. What I'm thinking is that really double units should have a transparent body patch to increase the targetable area for the cursor.
Body_patch.jpg
It may be possible to get away with one patch on the centreline, or it may need one either side to work properly. Will test it and find out.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh and the M53 wagontops look good as military boxcars, even though in reality they would usually have been used for general haulage.
M53_consist.jpg