FRRYkid, I can't help you with gold although, at one time back in the late 1960s, the Burlington repainted one of it's 4-8-4s in a water-based "gold" paint so that it resembled a 12"= 1', brass model. When EMD turned out the 50,000th GM diesel, a B&O GP40-2, it was painted and ran for years in a gold paint as the GM50. Metallic gold paint in the quantity required for railroad equipment is expensive with a capital E! That's why railroads use "imitation gold" or "dulux gold" which is really, yellow.
As for purple, have you ever seen a Chateau-Martin wine tank car? They resemble and could probably be kitbashed from express reefers. A web search should turn up a number of images and, they ran long enough to acquire ACI labels. Decals are available from Protocraft who can be found under decal suppliers at www.greatdecals.com and dry transfers are available from www.cloverhouse.com. These cars cycled between the wineries of California and The Bronx, New York and one could have easily been mis-routed your way.
It is great that you honor your grandmother. Much respect.
NHTX Good luck on the purple and gold! The only thing that comes to mind is, the Atlantic Coast Line. An ACL baggage car in Railway Express Agency service? ACL merged with Seaboard Air Line (SAL) in 1967, to form the Seaboard Coast Line (SCL). Have fun.
Good luck on the purple and gold! The only thing that comes to mind is, the Atlantic Coast Line. An ACL baggage car in Railway Express Agency service? ACL merged with Seaboard Air Line (SAL) in 1967, to form the Seaboard Coast Line (SCL). Have fun.
ACL has been suggested. I just haven't ever figured out how to bring the ACL to Eastern Montana in my 1970s era timespan. I do have gold in one building sign but not in any of the equipment.
I negelected to mention I even have a couple pieces of pink equipment in my collection for my protolanced road: a Tythearn GP-20 engine and caboose. They are a tribute to my late grandmother. She was the one that paid for quite a bit of my railroad when I first got started.
This car was purchased as an afterthought as I needed a decal sheet from that seller as the only one that had it and I wanted to get my money's worth so to speak. It is not inteneded to be one of my showpiece cars. It is only there to add a little more color to the railyard area. The only color families that aren't represented in my equipment are purple and gold.
As to your reference library mention, I do have a pretty good set of online databases that I use for the roads that come up for the BN rainbow era that I model. I also have a freight & passenger car book for the NP which is my main railroad of interest although when I model it was a fallen flag. If it isn't in that book or online I don't get the car. Two exceptions were two cars that I got from a major manufacturer (meant to order one but ordered two of the same number by mistake) that had the wrong fonts on the lettering. Rather than go through the hassle of returning the extra one, I just completely redid the lettering based on images from the book and online. I had already redone another for the prototype as I couldn't find a car already lettered for that road. I also protolance so I have a lot of practice when it come to painting and decaling my own equipment. Of the about 250 pieces of equipment I've got roughly half I have done major paint and decal work on.
FRRYkid,
I found an image of the Accurail offering, on their website. Their offering comes from a list of 35 or so stock numbers, including such names as Santa Fe, Pacific Fruit Express, National Car Company, Fruit Growers Express, Bangor and Aroostook, New Haven--?? New Haven ?? Oh well. What did I say in my earlier post about manufacturers painting their offerings in the colors of companies that had something that might have sort of resembled their model?
Accurail's depiction is of a 40 foot, plug door, refrigerator car with vertical seams in the side sheets. The car in the book is a 40 foot, ice cooled, refrigerator with hinged doors, and horizontally seamed side sheets. According to the book, the car shown as URTX 72722, an RSM, is from the series 72718 thru 72729, built in October 1948, by General American. One presumes the series including URTX 72733 followed, since URTX also had plug door cars built by GA.
The graphics as illustrated by Accurail are accurate except for placement on the car side. The Mt Rushmore mark is correctly spaced about four feet to the right of the door opening, just as on the swing door car in the book. The only problem is, the 1:1 scale prototype has a four foot, swing door while the model has a six foot plug door, which could force a two scale foot error in placement unless the four foot separation was used regardless of door width. Placement of the 1970s era ACI label was under the face of T. Roosevelt in the image of Mt. Rushmore, to the left of the dimensional data. These labels were slapped on wherever the painters felt like, regardless of directions given, so long as they were "close".
To the left of the door opening, the Black Hills Packing graphic was placed equi-distant between the door opening and the car end, with the upper edge right at the bottom of the overlap between the roof and side sheets. The reporting marks were placed with the U in URTX directly under the A of Rapid City in the aforementioned graphic.
This may be picking fly poop out of black pepper for a lot of modelers but, with the cost of today's models, it had better be accurate, for my money. NO FOOBIES. New Haven never owned any steel, 40 foot ice reefers. Santa Fe never owned any R40-26s, while PFE/BAR never owned any SFRD Rr class cars. FRRYkid if you really are in pursuit of freight car accuracy, and want to spend your hobby dollars wisely, consider such books an investment that will save you much more than you spend on them by keeping you out of "Foobie Land". If a $50 book keeps you from spending $60 on a couple of foobies, the book has paid for itself and, kept another 10-spot in your wallet. And, its yours forever!! You can refer to it as much as you want, whenever you want-2:00 AM or 2:PM, whether the library has it or not, YOU have a copy.
I am fortunate to have been in model railroading since the late 1950s. In the 1980s we were fortunate enough to have magazines that ran extensive articles on prototype freight cars. When the sheer amount of information made retrieval when needed an ordeal in itself, I started photocopying the articles that interested me, keeping them in binders, segregated by basic car type. Flatcars, gondolas, covered hoppers, etc. Tangent just released some 40 foot PS-1s with nine foot doors. Went to book two of my boxcar file, which contains five, well illustrated articles on PS-1s, including rosters, to determine how many I would order. Tangent doesn't do foobies, I just wanted to keep my order proportional prototypically. If prototypical accuracy and spending your money wisely is important to you, consider investing in a reference library of your own. It will be yours forever, just like my magazine articles from the 1980s.
NHTX I'm not familiar with Accurail's model but, a photo of URTX 72722 in red with yellow lettering for Black Hills Packing is on page 119 of Morning Sun's "Refrigerator Car Color Guide" by Gene Green. The shop date on the car is, "MIL 9-64" and a photo date of March 30, 1970. Why are the photos you found "too recent" for your 1970s era modeling? Most RSM type reefers were gone by the mid '70s anyway. Are you trying to verify the accuracy of the model? Probably "close, but not dead on". Accurail, like many model companies, will produce a car and paint it for any road or owner with a flashy paint scheme, whether or not it is an accurate model of the car in question.
I'm not familiar with Accurail's model but, a photo of URTX 72722 in red with yellow lettering for Black Hills Packing is on page 119 of Morning Sun's "Refrigerator Car Color Guide" by Gene Green. The shop date on the car is, "MIL 9-64" and a photo date of March 30, 1970. Why are the photos you found "too recent" for your 1970s era modeling? Most RSM type reefers were gone by the mid '70s anyway. Are you trying to verify the accuracy of the model? Probably "close, but not dead on". Accurail, like many model companies, will produce a car and paint it for any road or owner with a flashy paint scheme, whether or not it is an accurate model of the car in question.
That book at least gives me a starting point. I can see if my local library can get it via Interlibrary loan. The only images I could find are from the car are from its museum home in the late 90s to the present, I presume.
From what I can tell from the pictures that I saw, the car is darn close at least to my eyeball.
NHTX The car in the "Refrigerator Car Color Guide was a red similar to that of Southern Pacific bloody nose fame, with reefer yellow lettering. The cars in Dr. Wayne's prototype photo appear to be some sort of display, photgraphed much later than 1970. The wheel treads are heavily rusted, along with black rail heads, indicative of no movement, in years. The neatly groomed grass and the white objects at the lowest grab iron or ladder rung on each car might be there to deter climbing on the equipment, as one would find in a museum setting.
The car in the "Refrigerator Car Color Guide was a red similar to that of Southern Pacific bloody nose fame, with reefer yellow lettering.
The cars in Dr. Wayne's prototype photo appear to be some sort of display, photgraphed much later than 1970. The wheel treads are heavily rusted, along with black rail heads, indicative of no movement, in years. The neatly groomed grass and the white objects at the lowest grab iron or ladder rung on each car might be there to deter climbing on the equipment, as one would find in a museum setting.
While it might be at a more modern museum, the car itself seems to be original. I would say that the body of the car could indeed be red when new, and the reporting lettering could be yellow.
The two big displays look like yellow blotches painted with red lettering, or in a way that allows the body color to show through. IMO, if simply describing the color of the car, one could say it is red with yellow lettering eventhough the actual letters within the display blotches aren't yellow.
- Douglas
NHTX The cars in Dr. Wayne's prototype photo appear to be some sort of display, photgraphed much later than 1970.
Yeah, the picture was taken at a museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and is dated October 30, 2010.
I made a point to save it in photobucket as a screenshot, which preserved the photographer's copyright.
The info you added regarding the Train Miniature cars was much appreciated, as I hadn't been aware of the Revell offering. I sold-off all of the plug-door Train Miniature reefers, but did convert some of their plug-door boxcars into older style cars with sliding doors, as my layout is set in the late '30s. That allowed me to squeeze-in a kitbash of an Athearn reefer into one with overhead ice bunkers, as the first real ones were built in October of 1939...
After the appearance of mechanical reefers, a lot of the CNR and CPR reefers, especially the eight-hatch ones with overhead ice bunkers, were converted into pulp cars, with the roofs removed, and a couple of feet added to the sides and ends, and the doors welded shut...
In the '70s lots of them went through here on the way to the paper mill in Thorold, Ontario.
Wayne
To the best of my knowledge, the Train Miniature plug door reefer was only the second attempt at a mass produced offering of this type of car. The first was Revell's 1950s crude attempt at a PFE R40-26. I applaud Accurail's car which seems to be based on an Fruit Growers/Western Fruit Express prototype. Intermountain occasionally has models replicating American Refrigerator Transit cars with the horizontally split side sheets as in Dr. Wayne's prototype photo, available in HO. Unfortunately for those who care, they also feature swing vs. plug doors per the ART prototype. Unfortuately for ALL modelers, the ice cooled reefer was pretty much extinct by 1975, as most icing facilities had closed a year earlier. The cars still in use were used mainly in ventilator service hauling commodities that required air circulation instead of refrigeration. Examples that come to mind include former WFE wood sided cars in Burlington Northern paint hauling Idaho potatoes into Oklahoma, on the Santa Fe in 1974.
It's difficult to tell what colour this car was originally. as it's rather faded-looking in the screenshot below...
It almost makes me wonder if it was the inspiration for Train Miniature's version of an ice reefer with plugdoors...
When you have questions about a model, a clear description of what you are looking for, as well as possible images you may provide, make it possible for those wanting to assist you to do so more accurately and readily. My main interest is freight cars from the 1940s to the 1980s, which covers quite a span of freight carology and, I enjoy research in the quest for ACCURATE modeling of them.
In the 4/71 ORER there were 4 cars in that series and they were listed as RSM, ice cooled meat reefer.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Search the railroad pictures archives site for the UTRX 72733. There is a picture of the car.
Ira
Got yet another for my Forum friends. Does anyone have any photos of the mentioned car (or similar ones) from the 1970s? I picked up Accurail's take on the car from one of my favorite eBay sellers and am looking to weather it a bit for my 1970s era that I model. I found a few that tell me the car was real but they are too recent for what I need. As usual, any assistance that can be provided would be most welcomed.