Kitbashing Santa Fe mechanical refrigerator cars, Part I Left over parts
My HO scale Santa Cruz Northern
R.R. is jointly owned by the Santa Fe and Western Pacific. The era is 1971, and a major percentage of its traffic is perishables. As such, the SCN should have a representative number of SFRD refrigerator cars on the line. I have had several of the Athearn SFRD cars on the layout for years, but they are only stand-ins. Then, in 2007 the Santa Fe Railway Historical and Modeling Soci- ety published Volume Six in their San- ta Fe Rolling Stock Reference Series, John Moore’s very thorough history of Santa Fe mechanical refrigerator cars. The section on SFRD’s Rr-91 series cars stood out immediately. They are in fact similar to the PFE R70-20 series cars. They should be. Pacific Car & Foundry built both within a year of each other. The Santa Fe usually built its own refrigerator cars but some- times ordered cars from private builders, and the Rr-91 cars are one such instance. They were slightly longer than SFRD’s most recent home- built refrigerator cars, the Rr-90, and had the distinctive PC&F roof and an exterior post arrangement that dif- fered from both the PFE car and previ- ous ATSF cars.
Other differences between the R70- 20 and the Rr-91 included the style and placement of access doors,
screens,
vents and the exhaust stack for the re- frigeration equipment at the A-end of the car, the truck spacing, and various stirrup steps and ladders. Moore’s book provided information and photos on all classes of these cars, of course, and close inspection showed other possibilities. Refer to Figure 1, Rr-87 folio sheet, and Figure 2, the Rr- 91 folio sheet. The other two Athearn models looked like they could be kit- bashed into SFRC cars with varying degrees of accuracy and levels of diffi- culty. I still had several boxes of whole and partially dismembered shells from the PFE project of twenty years earlier, and it was time to put them to use. Have you ever read a construction
article where the author tells you to make incredibly precise measure- ments? I was always amazed and, truthfully, disheartened when I read them. It turns out the key to this sort of precision is an electronic digital caliper. It is truly one of the best tools I have purchased for model work, ever. On this project I used it for deriving measurements from photos, comparing prototype dimensions to those on the sacrificial models, laying out work, and especially for checking the sizes of the various panels as I sanded them to ex- actly the right fit.
Since the major differences in model- 68
The company-built Rr-90’s spotting features included the diagonal ribs next to the doors and Improved Dreadnaught ends, and, like the Rr-91 (below), no recess at the eaves. Two hundred (Nos. 55200-55399) were on the roster. They had 10′-0″ wide doors. In 1969 Santa Fe received 300 cars, their class Rr-91, Nos. 55400-55699, from Pacific Car & Foundry. The carbody measured 56′-8⁵/₈″ over the end sills and 14′-1″ from the rail to the top of the side.
ing the three cars and the largest amount of work is with the carbodies, we will work on each of them first.
Next month we will do the under- frames,
weathering. MAY 2012
detailing, and painting and
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