During the mid 1970’s, the C&NW saw the demand for the transportation of malt increase while the quantity of good, available covered hoppers in their fleet was decreasing. Faced with this increasing demand, in 1977, the C&NW ordered 500 cars (numbers 180000 to 180499 Lot number 11-01371) from ACF. These cars were very well received, and became the pride of C&NW’s covered hopper fleet. When delivered, these cars were painted a very distinct darker yellow with black lettering and a white “Employee Owned” herald on a black background – many say that the color yellow was the color of the brew most closely associated with malt. After years of hard use, many of the covered hoppers in the C&NW fleet were beginning to show their age, and because of this, between mid 1988 and early 1989, the C&NW began a program at their car shops in Clinton IA to repair and repaint nearly 450 covered hoppers from their fleet, including 12 cars from this 1977 order. When these ACF cars where released from the shop, they were painted in the then standard Zito (or “Safety Yellow”) with a red, white and black “System” herald. These model cars are painted to represent 3 of these cars. This HO scale cars are Accurail ACF covered hoppers, custom decorated for the Society by Accurail and include Accumate couplers. These cars have never been made available in this scheme before in HO. They are available in kit form only. These cars have been re-released with 3 new numbers (180057, 180135, 180145).