Tales of Modern PFE Reefers - Part 1

One of the most ubiquitous thing in railroading aside from that 50ft Illinois Central boxcar that pop up on so many historical pictures, is Pacific Fruit Express reefers. It shouldn't come as a surprise because PFE used to be the largest refrigerator car operator in the world. Started in 1906 as an Harriman business venture shared by Southern Pacific and Union Pacific, it would become so iconic that you would be hard pressed to have no need for one of these cars on your layout if you model 20th century in North America.

Like any modeller, I've acquired my share of kits and assembled models of PFE but something I never tried was to model the more modern stuff when the paint scheme was simplified in the 1960s and the large PFE name was spelled in bold sans serif black font. I always loved that scheme with it's bright orange and that "In Your Face" style of advertising to typical of the 1960s when subtility was no longer the norm.

However, that project of mine would involve tinkering with orphan models I had no use for. The goal was to follow a discussion with Chris Mears about how much details you have to change on a cheap train to make it look good. Our theory has evolved around the idea that a few elements must coalesces before prototypically accurate details start mattering. In short order, I would say the following must be respected to make sure the suspension of disbelief holds. After all, it's about tricking the mind.

1. Accurate colors (here, I mean not only having the right shade but also a realistic approach to weathering): this is the first thing our eye recognize.
2. Crisp color application and sharp decals: no fuzzy lines, no blurry lettering, no small defects that break the illusion.
3. Decent proportions: overall, nothing seems out of place.
4. Credible silhouette: this is were fine details matter. It doesn't mean the details are accurate, but that they are believeable and fine enough to not scream enough: protuding details will matter more because they detach themselves from the background: brake wheels, runningboard, roof grabirons, stirrups.

If you get these four things down, it's half the battle won... 

The first car I used was an old Athearn 40ft ice reefer. A classic car among the classics, it is based on a PFE R40-23. Sure, it's not perfect and that annoying way to fix the roof to the body is always bothering me, but the proportions are right, the car ends are correct and the rivet patterns are acceptable. The original pad printed PFE scheme by Athearn was fuzzy and crooked, so it had to go. This car will be fully repainted.

To improve the silhouette, I replaced the molded grabirons and stirrups with metal ones. A-Line for the ends, Accurail reefer stirrups for the ones under the door. The brake wheel was replaced with a neat Kadee one (they are the best in my opinion), the platform was made larger and supported with new brackets. Another big change was to replace the clunky stock running board with a nice Morton-style Kadee one. I gently cut the roofwalk end platforms since they aren't required on a reefer. Once again, Kadee parts prove their incredible usefulness. For the price, they look fantastic and require almost no painful work to install.

Kadee roofwalk really improves the overall look

Paint had to be accurate and I decided to use Tru-Color SP Daylight Orange TCP-107. I added a few drops of Yellow Reefer into it to fade it a little bit since I'll weather the car in the future.

As for the lettering, I used Microscale 87-1341 sheet for modern PFE reefer. In hindsight, it was a mistake and I should have used their 87-1340 set which is designed for ice reefers. I say that because the Pacific Fruit Express lettering as a different spacing on non-ribbed cars than ribbed cars. I had to fudge a little bit with the lettering and it isn't 100% prototypical though it's not noticeable without really looking into it. It was a matter of using what I had and what I could source from local shops.

The finished car is indeed a blue box car, but most of the sins have been corrected. While I took pictures of it on the diorama, I felt the underframe looked empty, thus breaking my rule about a credible silhouette. I will probably glue an Accurail brake rigging in place to address that issue. Also, while not a big issue, I think that next time I work on an Athearn ice reefer, I will rebuild or modify the bothersome line of rivets over the doors. The shadow between the separate parts breaks the illusion. Otherwise, I think these simple modifications are good enough for building a fleet on the cheap. A lesson is that it is always easier to find the real prototype behind an older car and try to improve.

At the end of the day, the modification cost make only sense if you get the car for cheap and derive a lot of fun doing the modification work. The average cost is about $4 for the metal wheels, a few cents for the stirrups and grabirons, about $0.50 for the brake wheel, $5 for the running board, $3 for the decals and about $1 for the paint, so about $15. The total cost including the car is thus $25. On the positive note, this kitbash helped me to learn more about R40-23 reefers, PFE paint scheme evolution and about the fleet history. Buying a RTR car or a prepainted kit wouldn't have provided any additional knowledge or appreciation for what PFE used to be and why it is so important and ubiquitous.

Repainting an Athearn Genesis PS 2600 CuFt GTW Covered Hopper

The last covered hopper project that flowed from the Napierville Junction debacle was this GTW car. I had the decals and thought they would fit perfectly my old Roundhouse car... which wasn't the case. The Roundhouse covered hopper albeit crude, is suitable for an older phase of these cars and not the one owned by GTW. A quick glance at Nakina.net gave me the answer about what I needed, so here I went and purchased a pricey Athearn Genesis car... 

As with the Napierville Junction hopper, this one devolved into a weird saga. It should have been a two evening repaint project, but it didn't go smoothly.

First, I tried to remove the lettering with Solvaset soaked pieces of towel. At first, it worked well until I left it in place a few minutes longer due to a phone call. When I came back, it had attacked the factory paint badly. A litte bit disgusted at the idea of striping the paint from a fragile model, I decided to smooth the marred surface with a wet fine grit sandpaper. It did work to remove most defect. Having learned my lesson, the other side was done with the same fine sandpaper soaked in the less aggressive Microscale Microset solution. Not only it worked, but much faster and without altering the paint coat. Once again putting to rest that unreliable trick that continues to be peddled on forums online. I'm always fascinated to see people giving advices on things they have never tried themselves, as if their opinion had any value whatsover.

The second step was to repaint the car. I gave it a nice coat of Tamiya grey primer and decided to match the color on prototype pictures. Highball Graphic decal instruction sheet mentioned light grey, but on the picture it was quite dark and bluish. Probably the effect of color fading and ambient lighting. I guessed it wouldn't be far from CN Grey No.11, but it looked different. So I came up with a custom mix of CN Lettering Gray, White and Black. Oh boy, it didn't look great at all! Under my workbench light, it looked a weird beige that contrasted badly with the red lettering.

After asking a few questions online to knowledgeable CN fans, they advised me to use CN Grey No.11, which made perfect sense. Unfortunately, my bottle of True Line Paint was dry. I tried to match the color with a custom mix, but it wasn't conclusive. I looked at the local hobby shops but they no longer had that discontinued color on hand. I ended up online where I discovered Badger offered CN Grey No.11 in their ModelFlex line of paint. I was elated until I got the bottle. It was dark bluish grey, slightly darker than CN Grey No.12. What a letdown... the only reliable paint color is discontinued. More search online helped me to find an old bottle of True Line Paint in Ontario. I ordered it on a heartbeat and was able to paint the car. However, this is quite bad to have lost that precious color. In the long run, it won't bode well for modellers. It seems that Vallejo Deck Tan is really close and I think the next step will be to sift through military colors to find something close to CN Grey No.11. For the time, my TLT bottle will be preciously stored... I still need it for a few projects.

The last step was to use the Highball Graphic decals and while I had good experience with their decals, this set was poorly done. The red ink is brittle and flake off... worst, they use a white layer before printed the red and it isn't correctly aligned. Under close inspection, you will see it on the model. I won't complain too much, but I've reached the point where I can and will do my own decals for many upcoming projects. I'm tired of dealing with defective or half baked products. You work hard to replicate a car only to letter it with things that fail in a way or another. I've done well over 50 decal sets over the last few years and I've always got excellent results from the company printing them, in this case Bill Brillinger's PDC.

Anyway, the car is done, it looks great and I'm happy to have another CN subsidiary's covered hopper joining the roster. Both hoppers cost me much more than what I had imagined, but they are gorgeous and they will have a deserved place on the roster!

Ciment St-Laurent - All Tracks Done!

The layout ready to receive the new cement plant concrete pad

Another big step has been made last weekend with the installation of rails on the cement plant main building. This structure was built on a large concrete pad with embedded tracks. We wanted to keep that look so a thick slab of sealed MDF was used to replicate it. Gluing the rails wasn't an easy task and at the end of the day, they aren't as straight compared to our usual standards, but no derailment nor any running issues after an entire operating session.

Lots of depth in the yard and under the plant.

Meanwhile, we have planned the next buildings to add to the cement plant, including the laboratories and the workshop. The big furnace and coal dump will be depicted on a printed backdrop for lack of space and to better reflect how things were back in the days. The plant is so huge that modelling everything as a flat would look absolutely overpowering for such a small layout.

CN GP9RM is taking over the plant switcher for a while

On a positive note, reaching that step where ever single piece of rail is in place and working has enabled us to start running trains there for the first time for a long while. The GP9RM was doing some switching duties while the new Rapido GE 44-tonner is getting a fresh coat of paint. More on that project latter, but basically, Ciment St-Laurent had a GE 45-tonner (a modernized one). The original goal was to use a Bachmann one but it proved to lack pulling power for our long cuts of cars. Also, adding DCC, sound, a keep alive, a gyroscope and some more weight in it was a nightmare, I've seen people succeeding in doing that, but that's a lot of work. For this reason, we decided to go with a Rapido GE 44-tonner. It's far more reliable and powerful. Perfect for our needs.

The return of gypsum cars really change the operation game

With these new exciting developments, we are now thinking about bringing back the gypsum and probably the coal traffic to the cement plant. When it closed by the late 1990s, they no longer used coal. At the end of the day, we may decided to backdate the layout from time to time and I see absolutely no reason not to have the full experience when switching Villeneuve. It really adds hours of operation without changing anything else.

The bagging plant waiting its final coat of weathering

Repainting an Intermountain Napierville Junction 1958 Cu.Ft. 2-Bay Covered Hopper

This simple project was the result of going down the rabbit hole very hard while trying to finish a project on the cheap. Let me tell you it wasn’t cheap, but it was much simpler than I could ever think.

Beware of simplicity!

Years ago, when the club started, we acquired a lot of cheap Athearn and Roundhouse rolling stock at a local fleet market. We built the fleet with $5 cars and didn’t have a lot of discernment back then. Among the cars was a small Roundhouse Penn Central covered hopper of dubious tooling. Allegedly a PS-2 2003 2-bay covered hopper, the model was crude and didn’t fit our theme. It laid back in the corner of a drawer until I decided to marginally improve the grabirons with bits of styrene and repaint it in grey as a 1950s PRR hopper with CDS Lettering dry transfers. It was destined to serve on my Harlem Station module but alas, I believe it only gathered dust in another drawer for another 8 years before I thought something should happen with this car.

 

Could the car be repainted in a more Canadian roadname? Well, a quick glance at different prototype pictures convinced me I could use it for something more local and I purchased a set of Napierville Junction decals. Meanwhile, I pushed my research forward before committing to butcher the car and found out it was both the wrong prototype and would require extensive work to be upgraded to a decent appearance. There goes the dream of an easy one-day project!

 

Descending into the abyss of Internet and nakina.net, it became clear that my safest bet was to acquire an ACF 1958 cu.ft. 2-bay covered hopper. I had a few choices, but decided to purchase a neat Intermountain car in a random roadname but which would be painted light grey to save me troubles. I figured out it would only be a matter of removing the lettering with Solvaset then relettering with the new decals.

 

Not only the new car being highly detailed cost an arm and a leg, but the roof and the bays were painted black! Also, the light grey from the pictures online was far too dark for NJ. Thus, I ended up removing the lettering (which was for once easy and fast) and repainting the car in light gray. The big modification I made was to remove the end cage metal plate used for the reporting marks. NJ cars didn't have that plate.

To save me some time, I went with Tru-Color paint, mixing my own blend of light gray and spraying it. As always, the results were great and the car ready for lettering. Fortunately, that step went fast and the result is far beyond my hope. I’ve yet to decide if I will add the ACI label to date the car to the late 1960s-early 1970s, or keep it as is for a more versatile look.

That said, I’m still stuck with my cheap Roundhouse PRR car in the drawer and what should have been a $10 project turned out to cost more than a brand new car! Live and learn… again. You can’t always struck a deal! I’ll take my revenge with other really cheap cars later!

 

 

Ciment Saint-Laurent - Bagging Plant Done

Work has resumed on our club layout and we are currently working on the cement plant. This is a huge undertaking we often postponed for every reasons imaginable. Fortunately, with our new Saturday morning schedule, we have more energy in making it a reality.

Last weekend, I was thus able to finish the detail work on the bagging plant, including roof support rods and fascia. A coat of camouflage color primer has been also added after I shoot the photos. Next step is to complete the superstructure (silos and conveyors) on the main building. Jérôme and Louis-Marie avec finishing the concrete pad and the roof, thus we will soon be able to add several details to finish this one too.

Meanwhile, I've been figuring out how the rest of the plant will be modelled. The most realistic approach is to treat the clinker building in the backdrop, just like we did in Clermont with Donohue. The foreground buildings such as the laboratories and the workshops will be modelled full scale with correct detailing. That, I believe, will greatly enhance the experience by providing the parking lot and places for trucks and machinery to get repaired. It will had a human element that was missing from this huge plant.

Meanwhile, when the small Rapido GE 44-tonner performance will be fully assessed, it will be repainted in Ciment St-Laurent colors.