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
