Actually most of that sheet metal work was done back in 2000 on that one car (and we spent way too much money on it, which is why it looks so nice, but that's another story). Our original plans for ballasting were changed by differing FRA priorities, so the cars sat unused for several years. Finally the ballasting was started, the rest of the cars got some work, and they did yeoman service. I have seen some pix indicated one or more of the ex-EBT cars got a major rebuild and modification for ballast service. Since the cars were built for coal service, I was worried that overloading with ballast would kill them fairly quickly, but they must be robust cars since they seem to have held up reasonably well.

JBWX