On Mar 20, 2017, at 12:00 PM, fred@... [STMFC] <STMFC@...> wrote:

There is some doubt that the new owners of Red Caboose, Intermountain Railway Co., will ever offer these cars in the future, as I have had explained to me that IM feels that they have "too many wood reefers".

Which might be true, but what worries me more is that the tooling of the wood (PFE) reefers is not OK. 
Why? Missing is the L-shaped steel strip that holds the bottom of the wooden boards to the frame. This L-shape is fastened with nuts & bolts. Also the steel reinforcement strips on the ends are missing. I cannot understand why RC just skipped an obvious eye-catching detail like that. 
RC tries to simulate this L-shape with a thick black plastic strip - I never knew why it was there at all. Now I know it's supposed to be the bottom part of the L-strip. The top-part with the N&B detail is just left out at all. 
Sunshine & Tichy wooden (PFE) reefers posess this detail and I sure hope RC/IM will seriously reconsider their tooling when they offer a new wooden reefer in the future. So we can all benefit from obvious detail that's not present at this moment. I've built and rebuilt quite a few wooden RC reefers, but since I know the detail described above is missing, I regard them as obsolete... Yes, a rivet counter I am.