I am an O scaler on the 3 rail forum but have a question for those real train folks. Some time ago I found a website (http://home.att.net/~Berliner-Ultrasonics/rr4.html#halcarst) that had a photo of a wood reefer that was scaled at about 33 feet with arch bar trucks with the door located off center. I was so intrigued with this car that I modeled it in O scale just for the fun of the project. After several years I am still trying to find the basis for the photo shown on Mr. Berliner's website. Attempts to contact Mr. Berliner were unsuccessful. Here is a photo of my model. I am just curious if there was such a unique wood reefer like this. The photo was sent to Mr. Berliner from Hal Carstens. Any of you "real" train folks know? Thanks

I saw a huge, thick book in a bookstore about railroads of the late 1800's and early 1900's. It was not of my interest, but it had a lot of illustrations of early railroading. Somebody has to have a copy of that book on hand.

Yes there was - Frye & Company Refrigerator Line - 34 ft. ca. 1912 white and black lettering- no indication of basic car color. Clover House Catalog #6 has the listing for the dry transfers for this car - HO scale only - car number is 508.

There is a prototype photograph of the boxcar in the book "150 Years Of Model Trains" by Hal Carstens. He (Carstens) notes that the lettering on the car bears no relation to him or his company. In other words, yes.

What was the purpose of the door at the end instead of in the middle??

That's a good question MikeCT and I don't have the answer. What I missed the first time when reading the initial post to this thread was the link to the prototype photo so in addition to the Carsten car there is at least one other firm - Frye - that purchased/leased advertising on one of these reefers.

In his book The Great Yellow Fleet, White mentions there was a veritable blizzard of patents with respect to reefer door appliances, door locations, and ice bunker locations/construction. He does cite the center ice bunker car with two sets of doors on either side and he makes mention of a number of the various appliance patents but he didn't mention this car.

The other question is this - what did the other side look like? Is the door at the opposite end or is it directly across from the door in the picture...and who actually built these cars?

Many years ago when I first saw the Clover House illustration I tried to find the answers to the above and met with no success. What I'm guessing is that there was some belief on the part of the people who built this car that this combination of door location and some patented form of ice bunker location/construct provided superior cooling/preservation.

I posted the question concerning this car over on the Yahoo Early Rail forum and I got the phone book!!

John Stokes provided the following:

"Perhaps this has been notede before, but the cars in question were built by the
Seattle Car & Foundry Co., just down the end of Lake Washington in Renton, later
becane Pacific Car and Foundry, and then, and now, PACCAR, a major builder of
road freight trucks. The bought the Peterbuilt line several years ago, and
headquarters are here in Bellevue.

There were two cards shown and described in the Pacific Fast Mail reprint of a
SC&F catalog dated December, 1913. They could have actually been built earlier.
One is the Carsten's Packing Co. White Swan Shortening car mentioned, and the
other was built for the Frye and Company Refrigerator Co. They were 34' long and
had an inside height of 9'11", with one having a 70,000 capacity and the other
60,000. Both had a steel center sill. The doors were located diagonally, just
after the ice boxes at the ends, and were designed with three meat hook tracks
so that whole carcasses of beef could be loaded directly from the abattoir into
the car and then unloaded directly to the packing company without loss of time.
The individual carcasses could be switched onto any of the three tracks when
first hung. The text says that "This greatly facilitates the loading and
unloading of the beef."

This would certainly make a very interesting and unusual car. I don't recall
ever seeing an actual photograph of either car (the ones in the catalog are
renderings of the car), and apparently the system didn't offer any major
advantages as it doesn't seem to have been widely used."

and Tony Colorado added this:

"Art Griffin has three photos of these Carstens reefers. Carstens Packing Co.
C.R.L. #103, the Frye & CO #508 you reference, and White Swan
Shortening, T.C.R.L.#108. The Frye & White Swan are artist renditions.
Car #103 is an A.C.F. truss roded 34 ft pre 1911 Safety Act reefer, Art has a
beautiful decal set for it too.
Car #508 is a Seattle Car & Foundry steel underframe reefer fitted for
pre-Safety Act standards. Art has a decal too. Clover House has a dry transfer.
Car #108 is also an SC&F car, found in the NWSL reprint catalog, from 1912/1913.
Art is working on a decal for it now. If I remember correctly, Irv Schultz had a dry transfer back in the early
1970's, and I thought Russ Clover had it at one time too."

Sorry I have not replied before today. Many thanks for the info. I referred Art Griffin to the "Berliner" website so he could make the decals for my model. Modeling the car was my first scratch build model. I had no info on the color of the car but thought that the green would provide an interesting contrast with the white lettering and red roof. Thanks again!