HISTORY

As I indicated in the December issue, in 1898 the St. Charles Car Company (later American Car & Foundry) shipped six reefers to the C&S, numbers 550 through 555. Actually, the Union Pacific had ordered the cars when they controlled the narrow gauge railroad but, by the time the cars arrived, the C&S had incorporated and taken over. Those six reefers were the first to carry Colorado & Southern lettering and, as the lead photo shows, there was no doubt as to their ownership.

They were also the only "native" C&S refrigerator cars with truss rods except for a few older cars the railroad had inherited from its previous owners. Those oldest truss rod cars lasted only a short time and after the C&S built twenty reefers in its own shops, it scrapped the "imports". The twenty new cars rolled out in 1909. They had steel underframes, modern cast Bettendorf trucks of early design, and carried numbers 500 through 519. They were also the most modern reefers to run on narrow gauge tracks.

In about 1912, the C&S renumbered all its reefers. The cars with steel underframes became numbers 1100 through 1119 and the truss rod cars became numbers 1120 through 1125. Since no narrow gauge reefers with steel frames have been available from any manufacturer, the correct number for any car on the market must be 1120 through 1125, nothing else! [USA Trains has offered cars with "steel" underframes. Those underbodies are interchangeable with the company's truss rod underframes. The substitution would correct the numbering inaccuracy.-Ed.]

The C&S never built a reefer with a steel paneled (Murphy) roof. All had wood roofs until they day the railroad scrapped them. So let's modify the roofs of our models. The procedure I will describe works for any manufacturer's reefer model.

THE ROOF

Remove the roofwalk and the four ice hatches, including their platforms. We'll use the walks again but you may toss the hatches into your parts bin. Carefully use a Dremel motor tool with a tapered steel burr or, even more carefully, a hammer and chisel, to remove all the simulated steel roof dividers.

I held the car in my lap and, since I am right handed, I held the Dremel in my right hand. My left hand gripped the edge of the roof and my thumb restrained the Dremel from cutting too quickly. Note: Be careful; it is very difficult to replace a finger! Use a planing action to remove the ribs. First do one side of the car, then the other. Use a file or sandpaper block to make sure the entire roof is flat and level.

You will need 1/32-inch thick styrene with grooves 3/16-inch apart for the new roof. The grooves should run perpendicular to the car sides, of course. Cut sections 4 3/16 inches wide. Scribe a centerline on the grooved side and bend the section to a peak. Be careful to avoid cracking through. Cement each piece to the original roof until you have covered its entire length. Use a good liquid solvent type cement such as Tenax or Testor's Liquid Cement for Plastics. When the cement has dried thoroughly, file or sand the edges of the styrene until it exactly matches the width of the original roof. Then reinstall the roofwalk.

Unlike the D&RGW, the C&S used no platforms around the ice hatches so we need make only the hatches themselves. Each is 1 by 1 1/8 inches by 1/8-inch thick. Use the same scribed styrene you used for the roof but, this time, run the grooves parallel to the side of the car. Laminate pieces together to make up the correct thickness.

Two beams, each 1/8-inch thick by 5/32-inch wide, support the hatch when it is open. Each has three notches on its underside to allow water to run off. See the drawing for sizes and locations. Note: The grab irons appear only on the right-hand corner of the roof, immediately adjacent to the side and end ladders. That is true of all refrigerator cars. Use a small piece of .020-inch thick styrene to represent the hasp coverplate.

Find a set of strap hinges from your local dollhouse shop. They may be one inch scale but they are the correct size for our models. We will need eight altogether. The St. Charles reefers used a barn-type strap hinge; the later steel underframe cars used a T-hinge. I used CA to attach the hinges, then drilled them with a #76 bit for small escutcheon pins. I dipped the pins into the CA before pushing them into the holes.

Use .046- or .052-inch diameter brass rod for the two L-shaped grab irons. Use a hammer on a steel surface to flatten about 1/8-inch of each end. Center punch and drill each flat section for the escutcheon pins. Make up a short piece to secure the center of the grab iron (where it bends) and solder it in place. Grab irons are generally a little under an inch in diameter. I used .046-inch diameter brass rod because, even though in 1:22.5 scale it equates to 1 1/32 inches, it still looks small. Paint will make it appear larger.

UNDERBODY DETAILS

I also modified the underbody of my car. The truss rods are incorrect because a wooden car has no crossbearer. For our purposes, the rods should end at the body bolsters; ending the rods at the crossbearers apparently provided more wheel clearance. I have had no clearance problems extending the rods to the bolsters and the models certainly look better.

Remove the underframe from the car. File grooves in the lower edge of the bolster in locations corresponding to those on the crossbearers. If you want, you may remove the crossbearers. Bend a new piece of .046- or .052-inch diameter brass rod to hook into the bolsters and fit over the queenposts as before but, this time, remember to add turnbuckles to the middle of each rod. I use Ozark Miniatures OM-03 turnbuckles; Shortline Car & Foundry makes similar castings. You must drill out the turnbuckles to match the diameter of the truss rod and assembling the rods is a trial and error process. Just be sure the rods have sufficient play to avoid putting a bow into the underframe. Reinstall the underframe with the truss rods in place and put a drop of CA on each turnbuckle to keep it from moving.

[If open turnbuckles are an unimportant detail, you may use nylon "weed eater" line of an appropriate diameter instead of brass rod. Start at one end, string the line up and down the car and in and out of the holes through the body bolsters. Remember to thread a turnbuckle onto the line between each set of queenposts. After you run the line through the final bolster hole, tie together the two ends inside the hollow bolster and secure the knot with CA.-Ed.]

PAINT AND GRAPHICS

With the changes you made to the cars in the December issue and the modifications you have just made to the roof and underbody, you now have a finely detailed model of an 1898 reefer. Paint the sides with reefer yellow, and the roof and ends with boxcar red. The underframe and trucks should be black, representing the asphaltum of the prototypes though, over the years, the color could have varied between black and brown.

Decals and dry transfers are available for the original lettering, the 1912 block lettering, and the final "Railroad Roman" lettering with the round herald. Your choice could depend on what era you model but, considering how infrequently the C&S painted its equipment, you probably could run cars with any of the three styles regardless of era! Three 1898 St. Charles reefers lasted until 1929.

The models' standard equipment archbar trucks are adequate but, if you want to be more correct, replace them either with Ryan Equipment Company's 1:24 scale D&RGW 3 foot 7 inch archbar trucks or with the new 1:22.5 scale versions from Shortline Car & Foundry. Neither is an exact duplicate of the St. Charles trucks but they are very similar.

I want to credit Derryl Poole, a foremost authority on C&S equipment, for the data I used in my articles.