Photo: CN Eight-Hatch Reefer 209500 (1941)
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Photo: CN Eight-Hatch Reefer 209500 (1941) A photo from the National Archives of Canada: https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/CollectionSearch/Pages/record.aspx?app=FonAndCol&IdNumber=3514331 This photo can be enlarged quite a bit. Car built in 1939. I understand PFE and Fruit Growers also had a few refrigerator cars of the eight hatch/overhead bunker design. Bob Chaparro Hemet, CA
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Scott
How long did the brown paint scheme last?
Scott McDonald
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John Riddell
1939 to late 1940s.
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John Riddell
The photo shows the first CN overhead ice bunker reefer as built in October 1939. The first 200 were delivered painted mineral brown. Beginning in August 1943 the following 2,985 were delivered painted medium grey with the maple leaf herald.
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Bob -
FGE had about 200 overhead bunker cars (reporting marks FOBX), and WFE had another 50 (WOBX). They were 50 footers (actually about 53), and from the few photos I've seen, it looks like they had ten hatches. -- Bill Parks Cumming, GA Modelling the Seaboard Airline in Central Florida
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Garth Groff and Sally Sanford
Bob, And the CN cars did get down into the US. In James H. Harrison's SACRAMENTO NORTHERN GALLERY there is a photo of one taken about 1956 on the SN (pulled by a GE steeple cab!) at Lake Temescal near Oakland, California. The car in the photo wears the later gray paint scheme. Since the train is eastbound, I presume the car is empty and was going home via the WP and GN. It most certainly was unloaded on the partially-WP owned Oakland Terminal, since nearly all the SN's eastbound traffic out of Oakland came off the OT (the SN only served team tracks west of Laffayette and had no major customers of their own). Why it would have appeared in the Bay Area is a head scratcher. My best guess is it arrived with some specialty Canadian meat or fish product. Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🦆
On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 1:08 PM Bob Chaparro via groups.io <chiefbobbb=verizon.net@groups.io> wrote:
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Gary Townshend commented: "The cars were originally developed by 1937, the year the test run was made, bringing two car loads of frozen fish back from Prince Rupert BC to Montreal PQ*. As Supervisor of Perishable Traffic for the CNR System, my grandfather had various shops experiment with mechanical refrigeration in the 1950's. I have had the pleasure of discussing some of those experiments with the employees. They agreed that ice refrigeration across the CNR was more reliable in that time. So my grandfather ordered 200 new overhead ice bunker reefers in 1958, a year before he retired. *Those first two cars had ten hatches!" Bob Chaparro Hemet, CA
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Mark Rickert reminded me there was a multi-part series in RMC several years ago on these cars. Looking back through my notes I found these plus two other articles. Bob Chaparro Hemet, CA ++++ Model Railroader November 1964 CN Overhead-Bunker Reefer by Craig, Allen E. Geissel, J. Harold Page 32 ++++ Railroad Model Craftsman November 1983 Protofile 28: CN Eight-Hatch Reefers by Swain, Stafford CNR Protofile Prototype Reefer Page 71 ++++ December 1995 Canada's Eight-Hatch Iced Refrigerator Cars, Part 1 by Goslett, Ken Swain, Stafford Page 70 ++++ January 1996 Canada's Eight-Hatch Iced Refrigerator Cars, Part 2 by Goslett, Ken Swain, Stafford Page 63 ++++ February 1996 Canada's Eight-Hatch Iced Refrigerator Cars, Part 3 by Swain, Stafford Page 80
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Thanks for the fascinating historical details Bob. I have recently acquired the S scale kit and look forward to building it to correct details. Am I correct in interpreting your painting comments that the red scheme gave way to the silver with red lettering sometime in the late 40's early 50's?
Chris Rooney
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John Riddell
Chris,
The first 200 steel cars were repainted in the late 1940s from mineral red to medium grey with red lettering . John Riddell
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