Refrigerator Car
Built 1885 to 1900
| 34' Extract of Beef Trust Refrigerator Car Built 1885 to 1900 | |
| Armour & Company
entered the private car business in the early 1880s, and by 1902, when the
company combined with its major competitors to form the 'Beef Trust', the
Chicago-based packing giant had built up an enormous fleet of refrigerator
cars. At the turn of the century, Armour owned 12,000 reefers - a third of the
American fleet - and controlled 17 different private car lines
including the Armour Refrigerator Line, the Kansas City Dressed Beef Line, Fruit
Growers' Express, Continental Fruit Express, Kansas City Fruit Express,
and California Fruit Express. Beginning in 1894, the
company also leased hundreds of its cars to the H.J. Heinz Company.
In their various guises, these Armour-owned refrigerator cars showed
up literally everywhere in the country from the mid-1880s to World
War I. Our 'Extract of Beef Trust' reefer was cast by Barry McClelland of Railway Recollections. It enables you to model two of the most common types of Armour reefer - either the cars built 1885-1891 with outside end sills and 5-rung end ladders (and your choice of wooden or iron body bolsters), or the cars built from about 1892 to the turn of the century with 6-rung end ladders. Cars of this second type (click here to see four of them in Duluth in 1905) were also used by the Swift Refrigerator Line and by the St. Charles Refrigerator Despatch. Either version of the car can be built with our 4, 6, or 8-hinge side doors (or even with our blank door and your own hardware), all with either vertical or diagonal door sheathing. Just like the prototype, our reefers are nearly a foot taller than boxcars of the same length, and our cars also come with insulated underframes like nearly all late-19th century refrigerator cars. Click on these photos for full-size images: |
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| Outside Dimensions of Car | Length 34'2", Width 8'9" over sheathing, Body Height about 9'9" from bottom of sheathing to top of roofwalk (depending on thickness of roofwalk and the cleats under it) |
| Siding / Roof | 5¼" beaded siding / 6½" double-grooved roof boards |
| Lettering | Various decals ($6 per set) available from Art Griffin, various dry transfers still available from Clover House |
| Recommended Trucks | 4-hole swing motion trucks #T-11 for Armour / KCDB / Heinz cars with outside end sills as well as Swift Ref. Line cars, 5' arch bar trucks with extended beams #T-3 for St. Charles Ref. Despatch cars, 5' arch bar trucks #T-4 for Continental Fruit Express / Fruit Growers Express cars. All $7.95 per pair including wheelsets from Bitter Creek Models. |
| Estimated Construction Time | Basic kit: 2-3
hours including grab-irons and brake wheel Options requiring more time: alternate doors, alternate end sills, underbody brake rigging |
| Kits Available From | Silver Crash Car Works ($27) |
