This is an old wooden hopper car at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in the town of Strasburg. It is a GG class hopper car built in July 1895 by Barney and Smith in Dayton, Ohio and used on the Pittsburgh, Youngstown & Ashtabula Railroad. It is about 30 feet long, weighs 18 tons, and has a freight capacity of 40 tons.

Info. from museum signage: "Constructed in the late nineteenth century, the Pittsburgh, Youngstown and Ashtabula (PY&A) connected the steel mills of Pittsburgh with the shores of Lake Erie. A subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad's Lines West, the line remains a major artery of coal, ore, and steel traffic to this day. It should come as no surprise that coal was one of the PY&A's top commodities. Like most rolling stock of the period, the hoppers that carried this coal were made primarily made of wood. While inexpensive to manufacture, these cars lacked the durability and strength of steel, as well as overall payload capacity.

The prototype for gondola No. 1818 was known as the "Potter Gondola Car", developed in 1895 by G.L. Potter, the Superintendent of Motive Power for the Northwest System of the Pennsylvania Railroad. This was the first major step in the evolution of hopper cars from gondolas. With the addition of sloped end sheets and discharge doors in the floor, the use of gravity helped facilitate the loading and unloading of the car. When the last of the wooden GGs were being built in 1899, the next major evolution in car technology had begun. The Pennsylvania Railroad's next large order for hopper cars, placed in 1898, was for all steel class GL cars.

No. 1818 was one of 725 class GG hoppers delivered to the Pittsburgh, Youngstown & Ashtabula in 1895. It was part of a much larger, 2,050 car order placed by the Pennsylvania Railroad that year. The order was so large that is was farmed out to several railcar manufacturers. Barney and Smith built this car at a cost of $512.35. Although No. 1818 had an overall capacity of 40 tons, some cars were later altered to a 50 ton capacity with the addition of higher car sides. Its primary commodity hauled was bituminous coal.