Hello all.... Among other projects in the pipeline, all pertaining to my 'santa Fe room' layout, I'm TRYING to model prototypically correct consists for a 1957 'Fast Mail Express' and the 'Grand Canyon'... Of course, a much more difficult endeavor than just removing a beautiful Kato consist from it's nice packaging... I'm trying to 'consume this elephant' 'one piece at a time'...so I'm starting with the head end cars, and among those, express reefers and box cars...(I've acquired 3 MT troop sleepers and 1 troop kitchen...the sleepers will, more than likely, end up as 2 NYC converted express boxes, and 1 NYC converted express reefer...the kitchen will end up as a Burlington converted box-baggage) At the moment I'm trying to put together a fleet of GACX(?) wood express reefers...in REA (REAX) (?) markings... I received 3 undec 'MDC/Athearn' kits in the post today...all in all, I'm pleased with the quality of the castings...very nice, obviously the molds are still in real good shape... however, upon comparing them dimensionally with my Fine N scale kits, they match 'up' well in every dimension, roof shape, etc...EXCEPT for the length...literally, except for the length, they seem to be the same prototype car...what gives?...lol... All my internet searches don't yield dimensions for what I believe to be a GACX wood express reefer...Walthers advertises their HO car as a '50 ft' reefer...BLI advertises theirs as a 53 ft 6 inch car...yet the review and comparison of these two HO cars on the Santa Fe historical site makes these appear to be the same prototype car!... I'm way confused...am I missing something?...ARE these two N scale cars, the MDC/Athearn wood express reefer, and the Fine N scale resin kit of the REA wood express reefer supposed to represent the same prototype?...and if so, which is more accurate length wise...(the fine N scale kit is more detailed OOB...but the MDC kit can be easily brought to the same detail standards, perhaps even more so, as it seems easier to shave the molded ladders and replace them with GMM ladders...) What can the experts here suggest? Thanks in advance... Bruce
Arbomambo, There can be some confusion regarding the length of cars. Most lengths over the end sills. Most of the "50 foot" cars over end sills are 53'. Checked my file on headend cars and found the following reference drawings: RMC January 1993, page 79 - Lehigh Valley milk car 53' 3/4" over end sills, 50' 0" over body. Mainline Modeler April 1986, page 49 Misoori Pacific express reefer 53' 3" over end buffers, 49' 11" over body. The MDC/Athearn body is the correct length. I have ten of these that are lettered for various milk companies, Bordens, Whiting etc. The milk cars generally do not have roof hatches. Hope that this helps with your project. Gary
I wish I had seen this earlier. Just cruising through and found this post and although I can't share with you any news of properly outfitted N scale train cars...I do have some prototype refrences you may find helpful. Send me a private e-mail and I will share it with you. The edit feature doesn't stay on long enough for me to hurriedly post specific resources. hpwrick@yahoo.com
Rick, thanks..I'll contact you soon... here is a pic of both kits in N scale... I measured from box end to box end...regardless of where one measures, it's apparent that the kits are two differerent lengths...now, if they represent two different 'types' of wood express reefers, then no biggie (over on the N scale varnish site, it's been verified that ATSF built their own wood express reefers to this longer length...they were plated 'over' in 52-3, and outfitted with a plug door... here is the car I believe the two kits are trying to represent.... and above is ther pic of the ATSF wood reefer after being plated over.... Now....if the ATSF car, before being plated over, looks like the REA pics above, then, no doubt, the Fine N scale car would be good for the ATSF wood reefer BEFORE my era-1957, anf the MDC/Athearn kit would be my clear choice for these REA wooden express reefers.. . Thanks, Bruce
Here is a pic of the Fine N scale models "Santa Fe" wood express reefer kit...(I have the two "REA" wood express reefer kits...) The car body looks the same, and the roof has the same round 'ptch'...however, the walkways around the ice hatches are much larger on the ATSF version W/O the benefit of research volumes, I'm forming this conclusion... The MDC/Athearn kits best represent the General American (GACX) 50' (53'6") wood express reefer of the type lettered for REA in the previous post... Fine N scale kit is the proper length for the ATSF 56' reefer (4000 series) but has a roof hatch running board set up more in keeping with the GACX reefer) (Fine N scale lists 3 different reefers...Santa Fe, REA, and PFE....the Santa Fe and PFE roofs have the larger hatch running boards...could it be that Fine N scale molded all three cars the same length, not knowing the difference in length between the cars manufactured by General americanm and the cars manufactured by Santa Fe?...seriously, otherwise, the prototypes appear to be VERY similar!... so far, that's my story, and unless told otherwise, I'm stickin' to it! it's curious to me...although the Fast Mail is spolen of as being pretty popular as a modelling topic in N scale, i've yet to see a really concise article, site, or build of a representative consist...what's available that's accurate, what's close, and how one can model, accurately, a representative consist.. also neede, a 'wish list' of cars needed from the manufacturers to help us model the Fast Mail! (I've heard a rumour that Fine N scale will do/is doing a Pennsy R50b (which, after a quick google search, seems to be an express reefer with a round type roof, but otherwise unique to pennsy...apparently, express reefers from many roads found their way onto ATSF's Fast Mail) snd this is just the REEFER portion of the head end cars needed for this train!...the baggage-storage-mail portion looks even MORE challenging! Bruce
The Second Quarter 1997 issue of The Warbonnet from the Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society is the most complete source about the Fast Mail that I have come across. It covers modeling from an HO perspective but is still very useful for other scales such as N.
