EBT hoppers and urban myths

I hope before the C&TS makes any decisions about those cars that they look at the inspection report prepared for RGRPC by a retired PRR freight car engineer who inspected them prior to purchase by the Commission. I mention this because there seems to be a growing myth about how bad these cars are.
The big problem is the side and slope sheets which are obviously rusted out. But the basic structural items (sils, bolsters, trucks, etc.) seemed to be in reasonably good shape. Indeed the engineer opined that the best of them might be usable at least temporarily with some minimal sheeting (plus of course air brake work and journal brasses). But one big obstacle was they were purchased without journal brasses, and required brasses that were immediately available only by stealing them from the UTLX tanks. Nobody ever figured out a cheap source of new ones since they were going to require custom moulds.
The repairs to the first car were both overly extensive and done very inefficiently, so not surprisingly they cost more than was estimated. Then the priority for repairing the cars disappearred when the FRA demanded the expensive subgrade work, rather than the ballasting, lining and surfacing that was the priority recommended by our DRGW consulting engineers.
But that situation seems to be resolved and hopefully the C&TS can get back to fixing track rather than subgrade, and that means they will need enough hoppers to run real ballast trains.
JBW