Wow:
Did a count this weekend only to discover I have managed through various means to amass a 135 car Pacific Fruit Express reefer fleet. I’m not done yet, here are other reefer projects.
Santa Fe Reefer Dispatch, completing the research phase of this project, a dozen would satisfy my needs.
Southern Pacific company owned ice reefers. do believe i’ll kitbash Bachman On30 examples for the four I require.
Dave
This problem has been around a long time, in fact in the 1930’s a motion picture was made dealing with your exact problem. Apparently many pioneer model railroaders were also addicted to reefer cars:
Wow. I only have 3 reefers…Maybe I should host a group theraphy session for the reffer madness guys.
I may have coal hopper madness though. I have close to 50 out of a 120 car fleet.
Let’s see—I have about —oh—85 40’ box cars that have grain doors attached. 120 Cylinder Hoppers—grain. And 75 covered hoppers—again—grain.
I’m not even counting the miscellaneous pieces of rolling stock
Is it possible to have a syndrome involving more than one --itis?
[bow] Just wait until I amass my billboard tank car fleet!
Dave
Dave:
Ah yes, the “Reefer Madness Syndrome”. I know it well. At least count I had about 120 PFE’s, 25 ART’s, 14 FGEX’s, 25 SFRD’s, 14 WFEX’s, 10 Milwaukee’s, and about 30 assorted Burlignton, C&NW, NP and MDT’s.
I cannot walk through my LHS without picking up a reefer of some kind or other.
And now, Ye Olde Huff n’ Puff has just re-released the old 50’ Silver Streak wood reefer kits. Here I go, again!
I think it’s a ‘California’ thing, LOL! [:P]
Happy produce hauling!
Tom [:D]
I tend to go in “cycles”, I get on a kick for reefers, then covereed hoppers, a couple of months ago it was stock cars. Fortunately I have some preorders out there for the next couple of months so I’ll just make do with whatever I thought I would like about 6 months ago.
Ricky
Depends on how you define “specific”. If you define “specific freight car-itis” as the desire to build specific freight cars, that is as close to exact as you can get to a certain type of freight car, not a “PFE” reefer but a R30-13 in series 50000-52000 with a Hutchins roof, it will pretty well cure the “specific freight car-itis” you describe as building mass quantities of one general type or road name car.
How many duplicate cars (same RR/car no.) are contained there? … I went through my inventory of 150+ cars earlier this year and fortunately found only one duplicate… Realized I needed more single-sheathed home-road boxcars, and that I possessed too many foreign non-boxcars. Also need to thin out home-road cars that aren’t prototypical for the railroad, like Red Caboose’s 40’ flat cars lettered for the SP. Looks like the nearby layout club will get another donation of cars.
Mark
There is a simple cure for those who need to have specific equipment. FREELANCING!!!
Of course, I recognize that might be too radical a cure for some folks. Short of that, may I suggest less research. Too much research can be a bad thing. If you don’t know any better, generic equipment that is not true to any prototype will work for you. Ignorance is bliss.
It is too late for me. I have “eaten the apple.” More specifically, I have acquired and read all five volumes of Tony Thompson’s treatise on SP freight cars. I’ll do my best to remain ignorant of other railroads’ rolling stock.
Mark
You reefer guys need to chill. I’d suggest building a large icing station for those cars. When you think about it, it’s a great industry for your layout. Not only is it an interesting-looking structure, but it can serve both originating and through traffic. A lot of these facilities were served by older “service” reefers that dropped off ice. Gee, there’s another whole class of cars you could start collecting…
Here is another Californian with a large reefer fleet, although not as larger as some. I have 53 (50 mechanical, 3 carbon dioxide). If you want to counter bunkerless reefers, the total doubles. As you may have guessed, my cars are models of more recent reefers.
NO! I model the Santa Fe in Oklahoma during the wheat rush in 1989, which means lots of grain cars, I mean lots, around 320 ATSF and a large number of foreign road (BN and UP) plus a lot of grain company cars, like 150 FLIX or Farmland Industries covered hoppers. Then there are the grain cars for my short line that connects with the Santa Fe in western Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Northern, which has a lot of grain cars, and then a large grain and milling complex at Guthrie OK called Stapleton Grain and Milling named after a UP modeler, Charlie Stapleton who lives down the block, most of these are IM, Tangent, Atlas, P2K… and… but hey, the wheat has to move and be stored, and exported, and all.
Bob
Bob
At least I’m not the only one with this issue!! And, yes, those times where up here too…My era still was using those dang 40’ box cars as well[:-^]
I also have GMD1 with A1A wheelsets----itis[:O]
No reefers here, but I do have a rather…ummm…“sizable” collection of Incentive Per Diem boxcars.
Nick
Here are my specific PFE classes: R-30-1 restricted to ice service if not upgraded to R-30-2
R-30-2
R-30-2, as rebuilt
R-30-6
R-30-6 as rebuilt
R-30-12
&
As a Californian I feel left out; no reefers in my fleet! Proportionally I guess I make up for it with 2 bay 100 ton hoppers.
Happy gravel hauling!
Nothing wrong there Dave…At one time I had 228 HO short line IPD boxcars am I am fighting the urge to repeat that in N Scale…
I suppose its all a matter of taste…I always wanted to model a Santa Fe GP7/F7A unit consist pulling 30 Santa Fe reefers…I always had a urge to model a Santa Fe passenger train with warbonnet F7As on the point.
I don’t have an unreasonable amount of reefers, maybe 25-30 out of about 200 or so total freight cars. Enough for general operations and an occassional 20 car reefer express. Having had a relative who worked for the Minneapolis and St.Louis I’m a fan of that railroad, and they used to pick up basically a train’s worth of reefers in Illinois west of Chicago from the Santa Fe and take them north to the Twin Cities or other points in MN or Iowa, so I have an A-A set of M-St.L F7’s to use in that service.