Thanks for the photos Matthew. It's great to see some relics made it some long years in general car service (in some way or another). The HO model seemed to be longer than the prototypes, possibly due to molds being "borrowed" from another type of car being produced.

I find it interesting that some forward thinking about the coil car's use can work well in theory, but utterly fail in practice. Lids usually never interfere with loading/unloading the car itself, even if they are completely removable from the chassis. Maybe it could work if the lids were lighter retractable "tonneau covers" like some pick-up trucks have......

almo