I remember a few years back they made a 12 pack with different road #'s probably “Blue Box” kits. Nothing on Athearn/Horizon.coms and the single ones are OOP. I have a limited ed 2 pack and 2 RTR’s with different road #'s. Four cars don’t make no Juice Train!!! I bet there’s a box of these out there somewhere. Stop lugging it back and forth to the swap meet, I’ll take it off your hands. PS I don’t do e-buy
As far as I have been able to tell, Tropicana did not have that style of reefers. They did, and still do, have 60’ reefers with refrigeration units mounted below the car. These were built by Pacific Car and Foundry and by Fruit Growers Express. These car look just like RBLs buit by the same companies with the exception of the refrigeration units and fuel tanks.
Railshop, Inc. (http://www.railshop.net/) makes models of the RBLs built by PC&F. If you want an accurate model, you can buy these, make rolled ends (instead of the dreadnaught ends that come with the car), and scratchbuild the refrigeration units and fuel tank. The kits have the sides, ends, floor, and roof as seperate pieces, so adding different ends should not be too difficult. I am considering doing this. Also, Microscale makes decals.
Tropicana also has some RBLs. These can be modeled in using the Railshop cars and scratchbuilt ends. Use the kits with 12’ doors for the reefers (RPLs) and 10’ doors for the RBLs. The cars in the TPIX 200 series were built by PC&F and appear to have two refrigeration units. I have only seen one photograph of a TPIX 300 series car. It is a FGE built car. There is only one refrigeration unit on the side visable. The cars in the TPIX 1200 series were built by PC&F and appear to have one refrigeration unit. The cars in the TPIX 2000 series were built by FGE and appear to have two refrigeration units. These would have to be scratchbuilt or a major kitbash of Walthers 50’ FGE RBLs. The cars in the TPIX 2700 series are RBLs built by PC&F. The cars in the TPIX 3000 series are larger reefers built by Gunderson. These would have to be scratchbuilt.
Microscale Makes decals so the lack of finding ready painted cars is only a minor obstical. These are for the orange cars. If you don’t know how to do custom painting the Tropicanna cars are a good first project to learn since you only have to paint the car one color.
Start with painting the car flat white or light gray. Cover with your choice of a suitable orange. Apply a goss finish. Apply decals, Apply flat finish. Assemble car and wheather to taste.
All there is to it really.
James
Athearn made 2x12 packs of these cars plus 2x2 limited editions plus 2x1 RTR cars for a total of 30 cars. I have them all but one of the more recent RTR car, I am hunting for it. I may have luck at the NMRA convention in Detroit or next year at the West Springfield train show.
Jack W.
As info, Athearn’s first production run of the 12-pack of Tropicana 57’ reefers (Item 2905) had road numbers TPIX 1201 thru 1212. Their 2nd production run had road numbers TPIX 1213 thru 1224. All were orange in color.Their “Special Edition” set 2302 had TPIX 1225 (orange) and TPIX 564 (white). “Special Edition” set 2319 had TPIX 1229 and TPIX 1242 (both orange). Bev-Bel painted an Athearn 50’ reefer as their Item 495 (TPIX 158, white) and also painted an Athearn 50’ plug door boxcar as their Item 443 (TPIX 358, white and green).
This is exact, I was not aware about Bev-Bel cars.
Jack W.
I do not know if you want prototypical cars, however these Athearn cars are not prototypical.
I don’t mean to bring an old topic to the top, but…
To the OP,
I don’t know if you ever did satisfy your tropicana car hunt or not, and I know you say in your initial post that you don’t do “e-buy”, but someone on the “bay” has all 12 cars listed: click_here (browse the “view seller’s other items” to see the rest).
If you still need these cars, and you can get over the e-bay thing, here’s a chance to get some. That is all.
Yeah, gotta watch out for those foobies! Even the Eel River/Rail Shop PC&F cars are not all exact matches. The Rio Grande should have a flat roof and short side sill notches. They are nice cars and for Rio Grande modeling in the 80’s, they are a must and were found on the front of hot shot trains carrying Coors beer from Golden Colorado. SP ran them too over the Sierra’s but the seemed to be more mixed in rather than blocks.
I am now thinking that the TPIX 200 and TPIX 1200 series RPLs were built by FGE, although they do look considerably like PCF built cars. The TPIX 2700 series RBLs do look like they were built by PCF.
If you look closely the majority of freight cars being produce isn’t 100% accurate if you start splitting the rivets.I am told by freight car gurus that some of the Atlas cars fall short.
Frankly I would rather be bliss with my current ignorance of freight cars then to worry myself silly wondering if all of my cars are correct or not.
Of course there is room for all in this hobby.
Have fun! That’s the ticket…[:D][tup]
I consider myself more of a rivet estimator. If it is generally accurate, it will probably be good enough. That being said, the Athearn cars are not even close to anything Tropicana had.
I would buy them if I could find them.[X-)]
I don’t know if you read my other post, but someone on e-bay has a 12 car set for sale:
The only problem I see with this is that the seller has listed each car individually, and each car is near or a bit over the $20 mark. I’m sure this method is great for the seller, if he/she sells each car for at least $25, then they would have made $300 in the sale of these cars. Well there’s the link, just in case you need one of them.
Thanks, I’ll check them out.
I have 6 Tropicana reefers in my closet still in the blue box, never used. 2 are 2 box sets and 2 are 1 box set. The #'s are 2905L & 2905J (singles) 2302 & 2319 (doubles). E-Mail me for details
One guy I know removed the steps by the door and removed the 2 square “fuel tanks”…They do look better and under normal operation viewing they look “ok”.
The last two juice trains I saw going through Ocala were all various shades of green. They were moving about 40mph going north. It has been about 4 years ago.
Flip
I’ve never counted rivits in my life, but some box cars are completely different that what was actually run. I tend to like to find box cars that are pretty close to the prototype. I am not a reefer guru, but the Athearn 57’ reefer “looks” quite different from the apparently prototypical PC&F 61’ RBL car.
With the caviat that people can do whatever they want, there isn’t any reason to try to make an Athearn 57 mech reefer look more like the real thing when there is something out there which is much much closer sold by RailShop.net (nee Eel River).
Sure,if the guy in question didn’t already own 40 of the Athearn Tropicana reefers…
Remember some modelers didn’t like the Eel River cars or don’t want to spend hours building a single kit.