While waiting for the glue to dry on the Wayside Bridge trackwork, I decided to do some R and D on the refrigerator cars I'll be needing for the layout.
First, the real thing:
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And one of the Athearn 1624 Blue Box 50 foot mechanical reefers that I have been acquiring. Now, I purchased this particular car a few weeks ago, was at the LHS and their stock of Blue Boxes is dwindling, so I bought all the remaining undecorated 50 foot boxcars and 50 foot mechanical reefers for $5.95 each. I wasn't planning on using the reefers, just bought them to have some spare floors and frames and trucks around. But then the trip to the potato factory and watching the switching being done convinced me that I wanted to replicate that on the layout.
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Comparing the SLC car to the Athearn, it is quite different. First, the door is too small on the model. Second, the ladders are full height on the model, but half height on the prototype, and the model has grabs on the left side instead of a ladder. Third, the refrigeration louvers are different. Fourth, the model doesn't have exterior ribs like the real thing. (Athearn does make a 50 foot outside braced reefer, but it has angled ribs on each side of the door - it is a good match for the ex-Santa Fe reefers that I'll need, and would have worked for this one too, just carve off the angled ribs and replace with straight ones, but I haven't been able to find many of them, so I started with the non-outside-braced car as shown in the photo above.)
On to the mods -
Door: I have a bunch of Accurail plug doors left over from some 50 foot boxcars that are a decent match of the prototype. Not exact, but close. So, I cut out the door and sides on the model to accept the Accurail door, and used some sheet styrene to go across the opening and give a surface to mount the new door. Then added longer door slides on top and bottom.
Ladders: carved them down to half height with a hobby knife. The good thing about the real thing is the paint is heavily weathered, and that will help hide the areas where the ladders were cut down. As for the grabs on the left, haven't decided whether to shave them off and put a ladder on, or just leave them.
Louvers: Gonna leav'em just like they are on the model! :o
Ribs: Used some .030 square styrene to do the ribs, they center nicely on the double row of rivets on the model, similar to the real thing.
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And a close-up photo of the braces and rivets on the real thing:
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Anyway, it was enjoyable to work on this tonight and was a change of pace from all the bridges.