The Hutchins Reefers Are Here

The CFT Hutchins can be readily identified by the humped roof and hatches in the center of the running board. 

One of the more interesting things in modeling the nineteenth century is the variety of cars which were produced. This was just the normal trial of different ideas and the better ones had just not risen to the top. One of the cars with a wide variety of ideas was the refrigerator car. The iced car invented by C. B. Hutchins became a moderately popular idea. It was popular enough that much of the fruit transported from California to the east were moved in Hutchins cars under the auspices of the California Fruit Transportation Company. While I have several stand-in CFT cars on the railroad, the opportunity to replace them with true Hutchins cars was much appreciated.

     Several years ago, Art Griffin produced a few resin car kits to complement his decal business. One of these was the Hutchins. I purchased some of these cars and have finally assembled a few. The kit was basically a two-piece model with the car sides/ends/roof cast in one piece with the floor in another. Grabirons and brake gear had to be added. I used Thielson swing motion trucks available from Wiseman Model Services in kit form.

This GARL Hutchins car is interesting due to the advertising of their lard product.

     The identifying features of the prototype, and the model, is that the roof is flat from side to side but humped in the middle in the lengthwise direction. This was due to the Hutchins patent where ice was stored in the roof area similar to the old household "ice box." Some of the known users of these cars were the CFT, Jacob Dold meat packers and the German American Refrigerator Line. My models included CFT and German American Provision cars.

The wood-sided Stanley car shows a 1902 build date  and is easily reworked to become a truss rod car.

     Another interesting car I put together this week was a private car for the Stanley Motor Carriage Company, makers of the famed Stanley Steamer automobile. I particularly liked this car since I have owned two steam cars, both designed and built by the Stanley brothers. This car was offered for sale as a money raiser by the Stanley Museum of Kingfield, Maine (stanleymuseum.org). It is a custom-printed Accurail kit which is very easy to assemble. The cars are available in a 36-foot version and a 40-foot later car with a 1920 build date. Both are availabe for $25 each. You can order one by emailing the museum (maine@stanleymuseum.org) or calling and leaving a phone message at 207-265-2729.

  
The 36-foot car is a fish-belly design but I added queenposts and reworked it to be a truss rod version more suitable to my 1895 era. Trucks are included but I substituted archbar trucks on my model.
The Stanley automobiles were built into the late 1920s so these cars can be used on later era railroads as well. I should mention that neither of them are based on a prototype Stanley car. To my knowledge, The Stanleys never had their own railroads cars even though their cars were shipped all over the country by rail.

Atlantic & Pacific Fast Freight Lines

One of the A&P cars plus the ATSF car, both sporting the same herald and coloring scheme.

During the 1800s when railroads were still figuring out how to do business, there evolved a number of fast freight lines. Most of them were run by the railroad and were intended to get your goods through with fewer delays, for a higher price, of course. A friend of mine, Art Hunhausen, has done a considerable amount of research on the various fast freight lines including the the California Fast Freight Lines of which I have several cars. He also found mention of a Santa Fe sponsored line. Both the ATSF and the Atlantic & Pacific Railroads contributed cars for the service. The Frisco also participated but did not contribute any cars. Not too much is known about the equipment. There are mentions of the boxcars in the Official Railway Equipment Register and a couple of mentions in the newspapers of the period. No good photographs have turned up. Basically,  we know that the cars were 28 feet long and were painted yellow with green doors. There was an "X" on the door with red and white cross pieces. 

    

The Pabst Brewing car plus one of the A&P boxcars.

 Based on this information plus a sign on an A&P ticket office which looked suspiciously like a herald, Art designed the letter for the set. The A&P had two usual configurations of its name, both of which are featured here along with the Santa Fe version.

   

You can see the "herald" on the right side which inspired the
cars' lettering scheme.

 In addition to these cars, I also found an old photo of a Pabst beer car. The herald looked interesting so I set about designing a lettering scheme. It matches the old photo so I guess it's not too bad. 

     All of the cars were built from a resin Southern Pacific 28-foot boxcar kit which was an extremely limited run. I replaced the doors and, in the case of the refrigerator car, added the hinges, latch, etc.

Some Progress Made But Not Too Much

Downtown Farmington with most of the new structures in places. The roll of paper on the right protects the train order signal from errant spray painters.

The road past Farmington leads down to the agricultural implement dealer and the winery. Static grass has been installed in most of the areas but a few trees, a boardwalk and some other details still need to be added.

By now, I thought I would have Farmington's scenery completed. Unfortunately, my left knee developed some sort of problem which left me sitting around putting ice on it for a couple of weeks. By then, the doc had figured out what needed to be done, gave me some pain pills and, at least, I could sit and do some modeling. Now I'm pretty much back in shape and able to move on. The last few weeks were not totally non-productive, though.
   

The George Fowler Son & Co. car is an old MDC car while the flat car is a Rio Grande Models kit of a 24-foot Virginia & Truckee car.

 By May 1, I had scenicked the rearmost portions of Farmington so the town is starting to look a little more like a town. Since then, I found some neat decals for a refrigerator car and built that up using an old MDC reefer kit. Following that, I found an old kit I had forgotten about and was able to assemble two 24-foot flat cars.
   

The prototype Holt Tractor, a complicated bit of machinery run by steam and
powered by oil

One of my goals for this railroad was to show the distinctive steam traction engine which were made in California in the 1890s. Fortunately for me, the Holt Tractor (made in Stockton) was represented in a kit by Rio Grande Models. I built one of these up to haul oil from the Milton oil storage tank to the mines in the mountains. The tractor kit went together fine even though there were quite a few pieces. The prototype used small three-wheeled trailers with tanks mounted on them to move the oil. Rio Grande Models also made the trailer kits which have been assembled but the tanks have yet to be built. More on those when they are finished.
 

My model of a Holt tractor. It still needs to have some trailers finished to haul the oil but this is a start. The kit is composed of all white metal castings.

 Now to think up something else to do while the knee finishes healing.