SLC Mechanical Reefers

[nachoman]

Looking great, Gary. This is shaping up to be quite a bit of work, but the results are worth it.

[Gary S]

Galen, as I was watching the game, I was thinking "this is like a grizzly with a salmon, a seagull swoops down to steal a piece, and becomes an appetizer for the bear" - nothing but a puff of feathers left.

[Gary S]

All the bodywork is done, and diesel tanks installed, next comes the pseudo-brake rigging.

   

[modelsof1900]

Looking great, Gary!
I think that will give a very nice train to your layout. Let us see the painted and lettered and finished models!

[tetters]

SON of a ..... hock:

[cnw1961]

WOW, Gary! To read about your mass production is one thing, but to see your results lined up like this is a total different thing . Very impressive .

[Gary S]

Thanks Kurt. I've been really busy at work this week, haven't had time to do anything, so these are on hold for now.

[AF350]

Wow those refrigeration units look great, I have seen a similar reffer at an industrial site next to a recycling business.

Have you had the kits long or do you know of a shop that has a stache of kits?

While running erands today went past the recylcing plant and noticed it's neighbor is a cold storage facility no rail cars on thier spur today.


Great assembly of a good batch of kitbashed rolling stock

[Gary S]

I did get some brake rigging accomplished today. I need more .015 wire now, maybe get that soon and finish the bottoms of the cars. Not sure when these will get painted though. I did some major work on the layout today too.

[rrinker]

Watching closely the mass production methods - I need some covered hoppers for my cement plant and no one makes the early Reading covered hoppers, in RTR or kit form. So it appears I will have to make them the same way the railroad did - add roofs to the open hoppers. I figure about 10 will be enough, maybe a dozen, since my layout isn't that big. I have an old MR article that shows you how. Apply mass production and it shouldn't be too terribly hard to pull off. This is yet another project on my to-do list.

--Randy

[Gary S]

Hey Randy, you're right on the mass production. It doesn't take much longer to cut ten pieces of styrene strip versus just one. Once you build the first one to make sure your ideas and techniques will work, then you just line them up and do them step by step. One good thing about doing a bunch of cars is that by the time you finish glueing a particular part on 10 or more models, the glue is dry on the first one and you can start the next step. Another time saver with the mass production is the thinking and measuring time - think and measure once, then make all the needed parts at the same time.

Right now, each of the cars has about 60% of the brake rigging complete. Stopped by the LHS and got more .015 wire to finish up. Should get that done this week. After that, they'll go to the paint shop, but not sure when that will happen.

[P5se Camelback]

Randy ...

My "mind full of useless trivia" (as my daughter calls it) seems to remember seeing an article "a number of years back" on kit-bashing the early Reading Covered hoppers (LO class?) using either an Athearn Twin Hopper or an MDC covered hopper. Can't remember which. If you are really not in a hurry, I'll begin the search.

My own plans call for a Portland Cement Plant (from memory, since I'm too far away to go there and actually take a look) reminiscent of the one we used to pass; I think we were going up PA 611 along the Delaware River towards Easton on our way up to Lake Wallenpaupack for the month of August (before there were any Interstates.) All five of us (and the German Shephard puppy)) crammed into Dad' '49 Chrysler Coupe with my baby sister's high chair and play pen tied to the roof (lookin' like gypsies) and there was this Cement plant with the siding holding a string of "fried egg" L&NE gray with cement stains, covered hoppers sitting along the silos on the siding right next to the road. I remember it because to me, the oldest at seven-years-old, meant we were about one third of the way there.

I don't really know where that was ... by the time I was old enough to be paying real attention to route numbers and such and remember all that kind of stuff, we had moved from Philly to the 'Burbs and were then taking Rt. 252 to 309 to 22 and up from there. I never saw the cement plant again, so I'm working on an almost sixty year old memory ... but it'll be the "flavor" that does it for me!

But ... I'll start looking for that article! It'll help us both, and maybe some one else, too!

[rrinker]

I have said article, I think it was by Jim Hertzog or one of the other local Reading modelers. Shouldn;t be too hard to adapt to any of the various proper open hoppers, although I'm pretty sure I have an example of every road number 55 ton hooper kit and RTR produced by Stewart, Accurrail, Atheran, and Kadee.
As for cement plants, mine specifically represents the one that stood in Fogelsville of old Rt 22 until the early 70's, although it will likely look more like the one that was at 248 and 191 in Nazareth, as I remember passing that on the way to my grandparents, and I also remember seeing trains there, even LNE RS-2s (although by that time CNJ had taken over so they might have been CNJ RS-3s). That one is still there, although highly modernized and with no rail service anymore. There used to be a lumber yard across 191 from it, also rail served. I distinctly remember the tracks crossing 191 on two different levels, one level with the base of the cement silos, the other that led on to a heavy concrete trestle divided into sections for different raw materials. There was one, maybe 2 plants along the Delaware, one which is probably the one you remember was at Sandt's Eddy, there's a big PP&L power plant in that area now.

--Randy

[bdw9535]

Gary,

Where have you been, not suffering from modelers burnout after all those marathon building sessions?

Bruce

[Gary S]

No, still been making progress. Little bit of an update here: http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?

As for the reefers, I finished all the brake rigging and stirrups, painted all the bottoms, and got a base coat of paint on the sides and roofs. All 27 are sitting in a box awaiting the final painting and weathering.

   

I did run across the following while browsing through the May 1988 issue of RMC. There was a letter in the Safety Valve column concerning the SLC's acquisition of these reefers. I thought that was pretty cool to stumble across the info.

   

One slight error, it is mentioned that the ATSF cars were renumbered from 100 to 145, but they actually only went to 140. 141 and up are obviously Milwaukee Road cars: