Hello, I am modeling the Santa Fe, and I have always needed a lot of help on modeling the dimensions of its shop-built reefer cars: http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=sfrc1899&o=atsf http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=87785 From these pictures, we can see that many of these cars appear to have narrower truck centers than normal 50' boxcars (40ft 8in). Or is it a longer body length? Either way, I would be glad to know. Thank you.
I was not sure which cars you meant with the "shop-built" description. The first picture you linked, from "railfan", a b&w flat side view showed SFRC #1899, a Santa Fe class RR-72. I could not find any information nor references to the RR-72 class in my fairly extensive bibliography of class-by-class refs collected frrom 40 years of Santa Fe Modeler and SFRH&MS Warbonnet. An October 1971 Official Railway Equipment Register showed SFRC #1899 as having a 59'2" overall length with 44'10" IL, internal cargo length, exclusive of length taken by mechanical refrigeration equipment. I notice a lot of mechanical reefers had a 56 or 57' overall length. The RR-72 was equipped as a Shock mControl car, and the truck may have been set back a bit for the ends to allow for a long-travel coupler gear. Not comparable to a "50-foot boxcar" at all. Your second photo, from rrpicturearchives, was a color 3/4 side view of a car with a 5 digit number starting and ending with "5". A sign in the foreground obscured the middle 3 digits of the car number, and a caption guessed the number was 50005. However, the top edge of the second digit is slightly visible above the sign, enough to tell it is a "1". This would place the car in the 50700-51399 number series in the 1971 Official Railway Equipment Register. That series has an overall length of 60'3" and internal (cargo) length of 47'3". I could not read the ATSF Class number clearly, but it is NOT an RR-72. The blurred class designation looks more like RR-86 but I can't be for sure. I don't have RR-86 in my personal list either. The photo shows lettering designating it a Shock Control car. Happy railroading.
Hello, Sorry if some of the descriptions did not make sense. When I refer to these cars as being "shop-built" I meant that they were built by Santa Fe's Topeka Shops, and not by a major manufacturer. The "truck centers" refer to the distance between the center of the trucks. I am glad to have some information on the overall coupler lengths, but the part that got me confused was the length of the carbody itself. This is the distance between the Dreadnaught ends. Judging from photos, I think it is probably 52 feet end to end, but I could be wrong. If you aren't sure about that, or if you don't have any diagrams, that's alright. You see, I do not actually work with model railroad cars. Instead, I do what I refer to as "virtual modeling." This the process fo drawing freight cars and equipment using MS Paint and Adobe software. If you are interested, I can post a few examples of what I have modeled.
Back when I was working at a TV station, I used Lightwave laser 3D on an Amiga to do 3D modeling and rendering. I am now building the layout I built "virtually".
Nice work there. You sure have a lot of stories to tell. Good news: I checked out a top view photo of a reefer, and it indeed has a 52 ft long carbody (16 roof panels, as comprised to 15 on a 50 ft car.) Here is my reefer car so far. Scale: 1 foot = 10 pixels. I can display more if you like.
Railroad Model Craftsman just did a two-part series this year on modeling SFRC cars (including changing the length) to more closely match the prototypes, might be some worthwhile information in there.
