Rapido GARX Meat Reefers - Custom Paint

Many years ago Rapido produced a very neat series of General American design 37' wood meat reefers. These were beautiful... and expensive. However, they would be useful for the Harlem Station layout and I waiting with patience. At some point, many of them ended up in the bargain bin because their only sin was to be either undecorated kits or unlettered assembled cars in the RTR era. I picked 2 kits and two unlettered ones for at a significant discount, thinking I could slap a paint job on them easily and for a few pennies. I started these projects, only to let them gather dust in my cupboard for many years, almost completed.

As usual, Rapido did an excellent job with this car but building their kits is always a not so fun challenge because they lack basic instruction. However, I soldiered on even if the plastic they used for this kit isn't great to work with.

It looks good... but that canary yellow won't do!

The first kit was painted in the GARX yellow reefer scheme and lettered using Clover House dry transfers. I tried to modernize the paint scheme to better reflect the early 1950s. However, I believe the word "Refrigerator" should be spelled in gothic font but I couldn't find any useful photographic evidence. Unfortunately, when painting it, I used Model Master Reefer Yellow which is almost canary yellow... It felt wrong, but I only measured the mistake fully when I put it together with a factory painted car. The difference is striking and I'm seriously thinking about removing the lettering and repainting the yellow with a better shade of it. That bright yellow would be a better fit for Fruit Growers Express reefers with a bit of white and buff  in it to tone it down.

Hard to believe dry transfers and old decals can look good!

The second reefer was painted in the attractive early 1950s Swift all-red paint scheme. Unfortunately, I found out the Clover House dry transfer I had was made for the 1954-built steel reefer. Since Harlem Station was set in 1952, it's too late for my era, thus I ordered a a suitable set of Champ decals. Thus, the lettering job is a mix of decals and dry transfer to better fit the prototype. I also limited as much as possible the use of Champ decals which suffer from thick carrier decal film. At the end of the day, I was really pleased with the results.

Unlettered cars with custom decals (for half the price!)

The two other reefers were already assembled and painted. I designed and printed custom decals which were installed on a coat of gloss varnish. They turned out very well and I will print other custom GARX decals to redo my old Varney/Life-Like kitbashed reefers and the Rapido kit I mentioned earlier.

Model Master Reefer Yellow (left) VS Rapido factory paint (right)

It was great to see these projects come to fruition. They are nice, classics and will fit any trains from the 1950s. No regret buying kits and unlettered cars. They provided their share of joy!