A model that caught my eye in the recent Athearn News was a 50ft mechanical reefer (YouTube video). It’s a rehash of the old Blue Box kit. They call it “Exterior Post”. It used to be called “Outside Braced”. So, what was an amateurish name has been changed to a more professional one. Impressive.
So I checked the position of the handbrake wheel and the refrigeration machine. In the BB era, they were at the same end of the car, as shown in the image below. I glared at the elevational drawing to see how the new product would look, and lo and behold, it had been fixed!
There are a number of things wrong about this car, and it is not correct at all for GN or BN and is close to a PFE reefer. I have attached Dick Harley’s notes on the car and how to correct some of the problems with this car except it being 2’ short which Irv did many times to get the model inside his existing boxes.
Unfortunately I am not familiar with PFE cars. My model, WFCX 8813 was within series WFCX 8800 to 8979, built by PC&F in 1967. Cars in this series had an interior lencth of 50’, an exterior lenght of 63’ 9"… (page 38 of Great Northern Equipment, Color Pictorial - Book Three by Scott R. Thompson 2000) According to this book, the first Western Fruit Express refrigerator cars with exterior-post construction were the WFCX 8200-8299 in 1963.
According to your pictures of the prototype, you need a model of a Red Caboose (now Interrmountain) R70-15 car which matches your drawing and picture out of the CBC 1970 edition.
In die-cast toys, there is a term called “fit-the-box scale.” This is a technique whereby for ease of sales, the size of the packaging box is standardized and the model is scaled to fit into it. By imitating this, a method of standardizing the floor and determining the body accordingly could be called “fit-the-floor scale.” Athearn’s 50ft Evans Double Door Box Car (ex-Details West tooling), which has been shortened from 52’5" to 50’, is a prime example.
