Pacific Fruit Express reefers...

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Can anyone out there give me some history on PFE reefers.
One question I have in particular is what year did they begin to make them out of metal ?.
I do know that cars with a single herald only were yellow, while orange models displayed both UP and SP heralds.
I also know that the UP herald was changed to black and orange after 1950. But that’s about all I can tell you about them.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tracklayer

2

Best to invest in the PFE Book. Expensive, but all the info you could want.

3

Tracklayer, this is hardly scientific, but I have a fleet of N-Scale steel/ice PFE reefers from Intermountain, Precision Masters and MicroTrains. The build date they used by Precision Masters was 1947. The Intermountains have build dates of '42, '47, '52, and '53, while the MTs are from '36 and '38.

I believe each of those manufacturers base the details of their models from specific prototype groups (road number groupings), so my guess is those dates are reasonably accurate.

I have a wooden sheathed model (Micro Trains) which carries a build date of 1918, serviced in 1936.

4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Fruit_Express

google is your friend [:D]

5

Thanks ereimer. That helps a lot, and also all the dates that Adelie provided in his reply.

Tracklayer

6

A belated Happy Thanksgiving Tracklayer, [dinner][dinner]

I have several HO wooden PFE reefers, all dated as pre-World War II. I’ll snoop around in some of my books to see if I can find any info on the start of metal cars.

I wasn’t aware of the differences in the colors and heralds that you mentioned. [:0][:0] Thanks.

7

Hello Billba, and a belated Happy Thanksgiving to you too.

What started all of this is because a friend of mine gave me a metal PFE reefer recently that has a BLT date of 1937. It’s a Model Power special, but after painting the cat walk and brake wheel silver to match the roof and a little dull coat to the sides, it’s not a bad looking car. It just kind of bugs me to run something when I’m not sure it’s correct. I’m even willing to over look the fact that the cat walk is incorrect and the roof should have a couple of more hatches…
As long as the car really existed in that time period and looked 90% like the real thing, I can deal with it.

Tracklayer