Prototype Information

The General American single bay airslide was a unique animal designed to transport very fine particulate loads easily. Cargo like flour or sugar, whose fine, densely packed granules made them hard to unload, benefited from being unloaded using pressurized air to help float up and force out the tiny particles.
Over 12,000 were produced in the smaller, single bay variety (2910 cubic feet); most of these went to railroads, though a third or so went to private shippers (most notably the manufacturer's marks including GACX).

Model Information

Inspiration for this project came from a book. I started with a standard issue Walthers single bay airslide covered hopper. While already a pretty good model, I have made a number of changes/improvements to enhance its realism. Modifications:
End cages:
- thin all the ladder rungs, and all horizontal bars; to me, the bookshelf-sized scale representations of the ladders were obviously off. A bit of work with a dremel and a small file reduced those to much closer to scale. Perhaps replacing all of the ladder rungs with wire, or the whole ladders themselves, would give a better result, but not worth the additional time in my opinion
- add brake piping from the air reservoir to the triple valve; while I wanted to run a line from the triple valve to the cylinder, there was not enough space between the brake and the bay wall
- shave off and replace the four drop grabs with wire grabs

Underside:
- add brake levers and rods
- add airline around underside of car
- add support tabs to the air outlets
- roping loops added in four corners
- step stirrup was also thinned

Roof: - replace walkway with metal walkway; I threw away the hideously thick walkway from the original kit, knowing it wouldn't do. Walkways are something that my eyes gravitate to right away, and so even though in some cases it's expensive I do prefer the thinner ones.

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