10-31-2011, 02:53 AM
As Gary has modeled them they are in current use. The originals were probably built in the late 1950's to mid 1960's if I remember correctly. The Santa Fe ran them for close to 40 years and then after the merger with BN they rebuilt 300 cars for test purposes to check the feasibility of using truck trailer refrigeration units on rail cars in order to test possible fuel savings using auto start stop technology. They rebuilt 100 cars with rebuilt original style Trane refrigeration units with gen sets, 100 cars with Thermo-King refrigeration units and 100 cars with Carrier-Transicold units. The U.P. also rebuilt a bunch of ex-PFE cars with Carrier-Transicold units, I'm not sure if they did the T-K's or the original style. The cars are the prototypes for the ARMN cars offered by Intermountain.