I recently came across several examples of Roundhouse 36' reefers kits with a soft metal floor-underframe that had a straight center beam...
Not the Old Timer truss rod frame, and not the Old Timer fishbelly frame.
What is the appropriate time period for this design?
Are these "rare" models?
Jim
Jim,
Roundhouse/MDC offered that underframe on their 36' reefer when they were doing a series of 'meat' reefers. The heavy steel underframe 36' reefer would be used all the way into the 50's. I remember seeing those red or aluminum Swift cars all throughthe 50's and early 60's. Swift did buy 40' steel ice cooled reefers, and 50' mechanical reefers in the 50's, but much of the traffic switch to trucks in the 60's.
I have a small 'fleet' of modified/painted/decaled MDC cars for my on-line Swift plant. It is sort of a tribute to my late father(he was an electrician at the South St Paul Swift plant)
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
Yes IIRC Model Railroading magazine many years ago did a good article (or series of articles) on meat reefers. Apparently many meat plants had their freight doors built to line up with the 36' cars that were common when the plants were built (a century ago or so) and so continued to use the shorter reefers long after 40' or longer reefers became standard. That would be the most common use of the car you describe, although I suppose a company could re-build an old 36' truss rod car to have a steel underframe to keep it in interchange service if they wanted to. I imagine that wouldn't happen very often, since by the time truss rod cars were banned from interchange, 40' cars had been the norm for at least a decade or more.
p.s. Jim my grandfather was a teamster (horses, not trucks) for Swift at one time. A few months after my Mom was born (Sept 1918) here in St.Paul, she and her mom took the train to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where Grandpa was working on a new huge Swift facility being built up there. (BTW the train got stuck in the snow overnight, always wanted to check old newspapers to see if there were any stories about it.) Within a year they moved back to St.Paul but Grandpa eventually went to work for American Rug Laundry.
When were these cars built? Can I I run them on my c.1910 layout without putting them theough the time machine?
Thank You.
Straight-beam, steel-underframed reefer cars were built from at least as early as the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century, several years before 1910. For the PFE, of its approximately 30,000 early reefers, only 4 lasted until 1950. By 1940 there were about 2,000 and less than sixty by 1947. The PFE may (or may not) have been more "progressive" or less "frugal" compared to some other owners, but there would appear to be a high attrition of such cars starting in the 1930s. Its later, WW1 and early 1920s versions lasted mostly through WW2 but relatively few past then (a little over 300 out of about 8000 in 1950, and 47 through 1962.)
Mark
Early steel underframed wood cars had a large underframe hanging down, like a USRA boxcar had for example. The straight underframe would be more common after about say 1920-25.
However in 1910 era you could run all the Roundhouse or Athearn 36' truss rod / arch bar trucked cars you want, and there are quite a few out there. They were all banned by 1940. Plus the lettering on a 1940's-50's meat reefer wouldn't be right for a 1910 era layout.
wjstix Early steel underframed wood cars had a large underframe hanging down, like a USRA boxcar had for example. The straight underframe would be more common after about say 1920-25.
That was an intermediate design. The earliest steel-frame designs had a straight-bottom, based on observation of photos in the books Billboard Refrigerator Cars and Pacific Fruit Express.
Most early steel frames were built up, this resulted in cracks around rivets and the possibility of nuts and bolts becoming adrift, soon casting technology advanced where complete castings became the accepted standard, companies such as Bettendorf were active in the early days of promoting the technology despite most manfactures clinging to old habits and overdesiging, particulary in the case of reefers which were rarely loaded to capacity, thus they could do with less material per frame casting as opposed to the typical box car of the time.
SP maintained several C8 36 foot reefers, rebuilt class of 1909 in company service until prior to WWII.
Dave
I am browsing through my January 1967 Offical Railway Equipment Register. It shows some Armour Car lines reefers at 35'3" and 37'10"
Dave Nelson