Ok, I’ll admit it, Im adicted to billboard reefers! I have found a way of combining my love of old advertising and model RRing. I found a company called Greenway Products that does custom painted billboard reefers.I’ve ordered and recieved one as a test and I like there work. Question, are there any others? Please list any companies/websites your aware of that offer billboard reefers(or any other cool custom rolling stock). Thanks
Years ago Train Miniatures, Athearn and I believe Tyco all had billboard cars. If you check ebay or watch at local train shows you might see some of them for sale.
Art Griffin Decals has literally hundreds of prototypically accurate billboard reefer decals.
Dave H.
a source for dry transfer “decals” is Clover House:
Art Griffin web site:
There is always the standards Atlas has done some phenominal reefers in HO and O recently, also Branchline trains ran a bunch in both their yardmaster and blueprint lines.
But if you are just looking for unique things:
Yesteryear Hobbies - http://www.yesteryearmodels.com
and
Show Me Lines - http://www.showmelines.com/10-3CalifDreamin.html
To me the show me lines seem pricey by today’s standards. They are Atharn Blue-Box plastic stock. The Yesteryear models us Intermountain and Tichy-Trains plastic (two generations newer tooling).
A couple more good sources:
www.westerfield.biz - BEAUTIFUL, accurate resin kits
www.branchline-trains.com - high quality injection molded styrene - prepainted.
Not to rain on your parade, if you intend to remain prototypical, which it seems you aren’t, but billboard reefers were banned by the ICC effective in 1934, with all cars having such stenciling to be repainted by 1938.
Signature Press will be coming out with a book on billboard reefers.
http://www.signaturepress.com/forth.html
Mark
This is an all too often repeated falacy, or at best a misconstrued concept, especially on this board. The ICC did not “outlaw” nor did it “ban” billboard reefers from the rails. It’s ruling simply put into place regulations that could create financial difficulties for the RR if they supplied an industry with a billboard car advertising a competitor. In such instances, at the request of the shipper, the RR was obligated to provide, at their own expense, a replacement car. For reefers in general service, this could prove a problem and it was far simpler to provide generic-looking cars than to keep track of which shipper’s ad was on what car and where it was headed.
Any billboard cars in leased, or in exclusive, service to a given industry, were total unaffected by the ruling (although certain rules about logo and lettering size were issued). Many of the famous meat packers owned, or leased, large numbers of reefers for their company’s exclusive use and these cars often continued in billboard style lettering long after WWII. Thus, the use of certain such billboard cars would be quite prototypical for many years after the ICC’s ruling. One might even say that a variation of the billboard reefer exists right down to the current day, in cars like those employed by Tropicana, et al.
CNJ831
Sante Fe - I would point out that, although it may not particularly matter to you just now, over the years many HO scale billboard ad reefers were offered that had no prototype for the illustration art/lettering displayed on their sides. I suspect Greenway’s car may be among them.
Collecting truly prototypical billboard schemes can be an interesting hobby in itself but if it slides from collecting examples of real cars to simply any fantasy concepts (football, baseball, or auto racing schemes, for example), it is likely to become less interesting and accepted by the more serious hobbyists.
As some have already indicated, Varney, Athearn, MDC, TrainMiniature, et al. offered an almost endless array of billboard reefers over the years…some of which are quite valuable and highly collectible today (the TM tabacco cars, for instance). Likewise, certain prototype industries had progressively evolving illustrations and lettering displayed on their leased or privately owned reefers (Swift, for example, had a both colorful and interesting progression of schemes), making for a highlight in a collection.
I would suggest that, in the long run, you’ll be happier staying close to cars representing real schemes, rather than any fantasy concepts, especially as your experience in the hobby grows.
CNJ831
I have to agree here… At one time, I had more than 250 billboard cars, including all 48 of the TM(i) Tobacco Road cars. It became more of a collection than part of my desired operating railroad. When I ran them in a unit type train (not all 250 at once), it was like watching a string of bright pastel chalk roll around the layout. Someone offered me $200 for the Lucky Strikes car and now I’m down to about 40 billboards (all the alcohol and tobacco cars are gone).
If you want to collect them for the sake of having them, fine, your money, your trains. But the chase is going to be a never ending one.
Even when they were still legal, some of the colorful beer reefers were a problem for both the shippers and the railroads. I seems that a large boxcar with a sign that effectively said “lots of cold beer inside!” was as much a magnet for the beer-stealing crowd as it was for the beer-buying honest folks of the day. These cars were frequently targets for theft.
I’ve caught a bit of “reefer madness” myself. Right now, I’m putting together the Walthers Ice House kit, which contains a large ice storage building and and elevated platform, used for adding blocks of ice to reefers through the roof hatches. In itself, this is an interesting side of railroad operations in bygone days that I’d never really thought about until I started to do some research on beer reefers. Along with a brewery, my layout also has a packing plant, so servicing reefers is a good match.
Another thing to remember - the whole concept of cooling shipments with blocks of ice (or brine, another option) was another thing that faded out during the transition era, as mechanical refrigeration became readily available. You won’t see ice-bunker reefers any more, regardless of how they’re decorated. The Greenway cars (I’ve got 2 myself) all have the roof hatches and roof walks characteristic of the block ice era, so they belong in the years straddling World War II, not in the current day.