David,

I would think it depends on location. For my area of northern Kansas I know the Mopac took part the Far-Mar-Co shipments in the late 70s/early 80s to the terminals/ports from the large Far-Mar-Co elevator located at Hastings, NE, so those cars would have been seen. That would include Cooperative Marketing Association, Farmland, West Central Coop, Equity Grain Coop cars. Far-Mar-Co also was located in Wichita, Ks. You can include Lincoln Grain in the Kansas/Nebraska area. Producer’s grain purchased several coop elevators on my line so their cars would be seen plus they had elevators in Texas. There was a Garvey grain elevator also. I also have photos of Cargill cars and a ADM Evans 4780 car was derailed on my line.

I am looking forward to the next run of Tangent Mopac 4740 and a (hopefully soon) run of Mopac 4750 cars as they along with the ACF 4600 cars (Athearn Genesis future release) were thick on my branch line. Can’t have enough home road cars either.

How I’ve been able to find the information is google search the company – for instance Far-Mar-Co and see if there are cooperate records that show where they owned elevators. Lucky for me the records are located in a university near my home. Also study photos to see what cars are in the trains. The vast majority of covered hoppers on my branch seem to be Mopac cars however that could be unique to my area. I did pick up one or two cars for roads that crossed my line and had interchanges.

Nate

I remember 40 and 50 years ago, almost if not all of the covered hoppers in New Iberia coming out of the Jefferson Island salt mine being either MP or TP with the buzz saw.