kudos to Bachmann for the new Covered hopper

[Williamson]

I was surprised to see that Bachmann is tooling up a completely new freight car in N scale:

"Canadian" Covered Hopper

(Bachmann HO Model shown).

Anybody know when the real prototype for these were built and who actually rostered them?

Mark

[Williamson]

Wait, found this over on the Railwire from Chris vanderHeide:

They're National Steel Car prototypes (so Canadian-built), a slight variation of the classic cylindrical grain car with the additions at the tops of the ends for more
cubic capacity.
They were originally built for at least DMLX, NAHX, ATSF, TRC, CPI and have scattered around in secondary ownership. (DME ex-ATSF; CN ex-HLMX, ex-?; WC ex-NAHX/CPI; seen a few other random reporting marks that were definately originally CPI cars.)

So when were they first built?

[David Leonard]

If Santa Fe had some, then we can at least say they were being built pre-1995.