In rereading the
Hinman MDC book material on the mechanical reefers (five pages
plus a paragraph and pictures on a six), I find I misread it.
The additional converted car (NYMX
2000, built 1946) to the 50 car 1956 order from PC&F
that I mistook to be 40’ long is the same length as the
others, it does however have 9 panels with riveted
overlapping seams between the plug door and the car ends.
Photos of cars from the 50 unit PC&F order show those
cars to have six panels occupying the same space. The
ventilation panels and equipment space door is also
different on that one car.
Another oddity is
the late 70’s photo of car #1028 on page 250 showing the
original decorating scheme, but with a gray side stripe and
herald on a solid silver car instead of green stripe &
herald on light yellow sides.
After a cursory
inspection, it would appear that the Pacific HO kit could be
kitbashed into something credible. Oddly, the model
side depicts 7 panels and two horizontal rivet seams in the
panel adjacent to the plug door, not an issue if you’re
scraping the sides smooth to rework the seams and replace the
“golf ball rivets” with resin ones anyway. With the possible
exception of slightly oversize rivets along the horizontal mid
seam, the kit
manufacturer does appear to have gotten the ends (1-3-4
improved dreadnaught) right, even the rib taper appears to
match photos.
Replacing the kit
roof with a Moloco 50’ Stanray Overhanging roof (part
#RF-0805), if attached to the locating rib on the top of the
kit sides, spaces the roof above the car sides per photos. As
the Moloco roof length exactly matches the kit side length,
it’s ends would need to be lengthened with styrene strip stock
to overhang the car ends per photos.
The kit supplied
roofwalk is not see through, so a proper Apex style
replacement from KaDee or the photo etched one from Plano
would be a must.
Coming up with the
correct lettering & heralds might be the most challenging
aspect of this kit bash.
The photo shows the kit sides and ends with the Moloco roof.
Attachments:
 exNHIX_ (np_) experimental rebuild.jpg)
.jpg)
