Let me make one important point. It often seems that model-
ers do not realize how many wood-sheathed cars continued on
the PFE roster, even well after the arrival of thousands of all-
steel cars, just because the PFE roster was so big.
For example, in April 1950, 62% of PFE cars were wood-sheathed;
by January 1958, the fleet was still 47% wood sheathed (and inci-
dentally, there were 712 mechanical refrigerator cars on the ros-
ter). If nothing else, models should be chosen with this proportion
of wood vs. steel in the car fleet in mind.
Modeling an Ice House
As I stated in Part One, describing prototype operations, most
icing facilities in PFE territory were ice transfer plants (ITP), and
many were not really
large. This permits
modeling a small icing
facility that is not out
of scale with the rest
of the layout.
In my town of Shum-
ala, I have done
just this, with an ice
house set up for rail
delivery of ice from
elsewhere, and a two-
car deck. The building
is a simple structure
of styrene novelty
siding, with a Grandt
Line window and sim-
plified doors. I show
Getting Real Column - 13
32: The styrene building is built
with novelty siding, reinforced
near the top of the sides with
square ABS ubing, and with an
angle shape at mid-height, along
with corner angles. This kind of
construction is quick and easy.
32
the inside of the
completed structure
(32) – very simple
styrene modeling.
Almost all my struc-
tures have remov-
able roofs, for future
access to replace
window glazing, add
lighting if desired,
and so on. You can
see the roof con-
struction for this
structure (33), which
is heavy cardstock
amply reinforced. I
modeled the sides of
the clerestory atop
the roof with styrene
clapboard, to sug-
gest louvers in the clerestory.
An end view of the ice house (34) shows where drive-up cus-
tomers would purchase ice. A small-town ice facility like this
would likely manufacture small amounts of clear ice for con-
sumer sale, but would have limited ability to produce ice in
the quantities needed for icing refrigerator cars around peak
harvest season.
I present an overview of the ice house and deck here (35). The
deck is entirely of stripwood, pre-stained and built board-by-
board, and supported on bents hat were constructed using a sim-
ple fixture to ensure that they would be identical.
33: The ice house roof is made
from heavy cardstock, thoroughly
reinforced inside with quarter-inch
square balsa and with cardstock
roof formers to ensure matching
roof pitch with the building ends.
The outside of the roof has mask-
ing tape cut into strips to simu-
late rolled roofing, and painted
medium gray.
33
MRH-Oct 2013
