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. These where soon to become a railroad standard and received
AAR designation "LO". They were 35' 3" in length had 2 bays
with 4 discharge openings, 8 square roof hatches and 70 ton weight capacity.
Through the years they were copied by several other manufacturers with very
few visible changes. In time many railroad purchased or leased these cars,
including roads such as ACL, C&O, CB&Q, Clinchfield, DT&I Erie,
Great Northern, Nickel Plate Road, N&W, Santa Fe and many others. Many
private owner cars also existed. Between 1936 and 1957 more than 21,000 of the
ACF designed cars were built some of which still can be found in company
service on various roads.
