MODELING Weekend Photo Fun, February 7, 2020

Good morning from snowy and cold Northeast Ohio!

I completed a couple of cars this week.



Walthers Express Reefer Kit, broke 3 drills drilling all the holes for the grabs on this kit. Car was painted with Scalecoat II Hunter Green and lettered with Microscale Decals. These are the new look lettering that REA Express started in 1961 when they were allowed to integrate trucks into the fleet. When passenger trains fell off REA ran into problems. Express Reefers ran in passenger trains carrying high value fruit items and or things like magazines and newspapers that required a clean dry car to avoid damage.



This is a Life-Like Proto 2000 Kit of the PS 4427 Covered Hopper, replaced the Plastic Roofwalk with a Plano one, drilled about 50 #79 holes for the roofwalk supports, on this one I did not break a drill, had much softer plastic than the Walthers kit. Car was painted with Scalecoat II UP Hopper Car Gray and lettered with Oddballs Decals. The C&EI was controlled by the MP and their cars ran in the same number series as the MP and were delivered in 1971 for grain service.



The reason for the Southern Caboose I finished last week. A pair of Southern GP38-2's running on the Strongsville Club Layout. Will be using these in operating sessions on the layout.

Thanks for looking!

Rick Jesionowski

 

Those Southern geeps sure do look nice Rick!

 

Sarahs Valley Depot by Josta posted Feb 7, 2020 at 8:28 AM

Passengers patiently waiting for the next train at Sarah's Valley one evening....

 

A pair of GP20's -- ex demonstrators
(Another old project) --




Thanks,
Wolf

 

Wolf - I sure understand "old projects", so here is one of mine. No elegant picture, just the facts man.....



As you can see there are;

1 - F7-A KATO
1 - F7-B IM
2 - GP-30 ATLAS/KATO
1 - SD-35 ATLAS (sound installed)
1 - SD-35 ATLAS/KATO * *
2 - SD-9 ATLAS/KATO

What can not be seen and what I have spent a great deal of effort on is there are 2 Loksound, one Lokpilot, 2 Digitrax, and one Zimo installed by myself. These have all been speed matched and run very well together, so I can make a consist using any combination of these units. I know I have lost the Drive hold capability but I can live with that. I used the ESU 567C sound file in 2 and the two SD35's are Atlas installed with that same file pre-loaded. Three or four of these consisted together sound great.

* * This, Tiger Stripe, unit is one of Atlas recent SD35 releases with sound installed. It came with an SD35 high hood so I replaced that shell with and old ATLAS/KATO SD9 shell.

Thanks for looking, and as always have fun,
Carl

 

Here a close up of 5413, a SD40T-2s of the Rio Grande Railroad.

Unfortunately, a rare picture in Z scale,

Best,
Sven

 

The Winter 2019 issue of Classic Trains has an interesting article on the REA. It doesn't precisely answer your question, but it has some interesting information. The article notes that REA's reefers were often used to handle non-refrigerated freight and that by the late 1950s and early '60s, they were rarely used for refrigerated freight.

The last order of reefers to the REA was a 500 car order to AC&F for 55 FT ice bunker cars in 1947-1948. These were delivered in a neat silver and green scheme, but all were repainted in solid green in the early 1950s. REA bought 1,000 more cars from General American in 1955 and 1957, plus another 275 converted from WW-II troop sleepers. The purchases were controversial, as trucks had taken most of the REA's refrigerated traffic and it was unlikely that REA would be able to reclaim it.

 

In addition to Hardcoaler's post, the Express Reefer's ran until 1972-73 in REX paint. With the loss of passenger trains and also the icing platforms with the loss of regular ice traffic from regular refrigerator cars there was not much use for these cars anymore. Although as I noted above, since they had insulation and were well sealed they could be used for the movement of printed magazines and newspapers, although much of that traffic had been lost to the airlines by this time. Most of the express reefers were sold to the San Luis Central who leased them out for things like potatoes which did not require refrigeration but they would not freeze in the insulated cars.

Another side note, I was talking to some of my club members about this on Saturday, and they noted that where there were two bridges for a two track mainline, the eastbound bridge was in much worse shape than the westbound due to all the brine that was leaking out of the reefers going east and they westbound bridge was in good shape as they were empty going back.

Rick Jesionowski

 

Oldie but goodie.