Getting Real Column - 8
I did so with Athearn reefer bodies, adding replacement cor-
rect ends. I got my ends from Richard Hendrickson’s former
Westrail moldings; these are now available from Southern
Car & Foundry.
I show here my Class R-40-14 model (24). By 1953 these
cars were 12 years old, and most would surely have been
repainted into a later scheme, likely the two-emblem black-
white scheme.
That is what I chose to apply on this model. Again, the new Mi-
croscale set 87-501 is the one to use for this scheme.
24: Here is my model of a Class R-40-14 car, repainted
into the 1951 paint scheme. This is an Athearn reefer
body with replaced metal grab irons and sill steps, a
steel-grid running board, and correct resin ends with
free-standing details. Decals are a mixture, but nowadays
this car could be done entirely with the new Microscale
set 87-501. The model is posed in front of the Phelan
& Taylor packing house at Shumala on my layout. The
structure is a Showcase Miniatures kit.
24
Class R-50-5.
Although PFE originally built 400 cars of
Class R-50-1, when rebuilt, they were split into two new
groups of classes, R-50-3,-4 and R-50-5. Both the original
cars and the R-50-5 rebuilds have been offered in resin by
Sunshine. As the -5 cars were the most numerous survivors
of the original 400 cars, I decided to have one, even though
this class size falls below my cutoff of 1000 cars. My Sunshine
model is shown, see (25).
Frozen food was a growing category of perishable shipment af-
ter World War II. PFE’s ice-refrigerated (and heavily salted) cars
25: Class R-50-5 was distinctive in that it is 47 feet long,
instead of the 41 feet of nearly all the other PFE ice cars.
The class was mostly used for frozen food. My model is
the Sunshine resin version and is shown in this view up
Nipomo Street, spotted at the wholesale grocer, Peerless
Foods, in my layout town of Ballard. The car was built by
Dennis Williams and lettered and weathered by me.
25
MRH-Oct 2013
