Does anyone have a color photo of a CNR 8 Hatches Reefer, 1945 to 1960 period. I have some models from Athearn that are very light grey and I have two of the new release from True Line Trains that are much darker in color. I would like to know what they looked like in real life.
Gidday Guy, these any use to you ??
http://www.ghqmodels.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3597
http://www.ghqmodels.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3598&sid=70ee7c88fce004fbdb1f92c4d8febfc4
and while it may not be the best, there is a colour photo from 1957 right at the end of this link…
http://cnlines.ca/magazine/CN_Lines_v12n3.pdf
Cheers, the Bear
As you’ll note in the Bear’s links, these cars weathered quite rapidly due to the brine/ice mixture used for cooling. There was probably a whole range of grey shades which would have been appropriate at any particular time.
RMC ran a three-part series on these cars (CPR, CNR and PGE) in the Dec. '95, and Jan. and Feb. '96 issues. The January issue dealt with the CNR prototypes, including a couple of colour photos, while the February issue covered those of the PGE and some modelling notes. Two colour photos of models show a fairly light grey, similar to what I recall on my Athearn CNR reefer of many years ago.
I did note an odd discrepancy in Bear’s second link, in the table dealing with paint schemes: specifically Note 4 about the BLT dates. In the December RMC, there’s a b&w photo of CNR 209500, the first CNR car of this design, and the BLT date is clearly shown as 10-39. The mineral red paint was used on new cars from Oct. '39 to May '43, when it was replaced by grey, and those early cars remained in service in the as-built colour until they required shopping, at which time they would have received the then-current paint and lettering.
I wonder if Note 4 should have been placed in line “B”, covering the first of the grey cars.
I used the RMC articles to rebuild an Athearn car into a reasonable representation of the CNR’s early 8-hatch reefers, and the 10-39 built date was sufficient to allow its use on my “late '30s-era” layout. [swg]
Changes to the original car include a
Thank you to both of you for the info.
Beautiful modeling Wayne.