A Couple More Heinz Cars

Heinz Vinegar Tank No. 50. waiting in Oakdale for a gigantic salad.

While I was cleaning up after my Heinz car project (http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/2015/10/condiment-cars.html), I found two other cars and a couple of photos that prompted me to do another two Heinz cars. The first photo was of a large vinegar tank car. What appealed to me was the pickle cutout mounted on the side of the car. I looked through my decals and found that Art Griffin had made a decal for just that car. He said that the lettering was designed for an AHM wood tank car which I happened to have on hand.
    The car was easily painted and the walk on the side of the car added. The railing is from a Central Valley fence set. I made the cutout by applying the decal to a piece of .020" styrene and then cutting around the decal outline. A roof hatch was made with some tubing and a circular piece of styrene.
 

Vinegar Tank car No. 203 is a two-compartment tanker kitbashed from two kits.

    The second car was also modeled after an old photo. I had a Northeastern Models Richter Tank Car which I thought I could use except that it was too long and too modern looking. The prototype photo (too poor to reproduce here) looked like a tank mounted on a flat car. I found an old 35-ft. flat car kit in my stock and assembled it according to the instructions. The two tanks on the Northeastern kit were cut down to fit on the car. The end pieces and the letterboard were added along with the filler covers. The artwork for the decals was worked up and printed out and applied. I had to use a lot of decal softener to get the "57" to form around the tank rods.
    Although there are more Heinz cars to be built at some point, I think I will stop for right now. I have too many to have on the railroad at one time and my display case is getting crowded. Time for a different project.

Condiment Cars

Ten new Heinz cars at Oakdale. The two white cars are the earliest paint scheme with the two yellow cars represent the latest scheme. Heinz changed the paint frequently and even had at least one car advertising a different product on each side of the car.

Before I left California to move to Kansas City in 2005, I had started to assemble ten Westerfield kits. All the things associated with moving overcame me, however, and I packed away the kits to be built later. Over the last few weeks, I finally finished them. As you can see, they are all based on cars used by the H. J. Heinz Company.
    Due to variety of car decorations and the products mentioned, I have always like the Heinz cars. Fortunately for modelers, I guess Westerfield did as well since they came up with numerous lettering sets to adorn their kits. Clover House has done so as well as has Art Griffin. The old Heinz Special Interest Group researching and promoting the cars helped as well. The kits are still available if anyone has any leanings toward condiments being advertised on railroad cars.
   The cars appear to be refrigerator cars but they are not. Most of the Heinz "reefers" were built like refrigerator cars but without ice compartments so they were just insulated boxcars. This makes sense as most of the products produced you find right on the grocery store shelves rather than in the cooler. I assembled the cars per the kit instructions. Some of them require swing motion trucks rather than arch bars. I used ones that Westerfield had originally made for these kits and which are not marketed by Wiseman Model Services (http://www.locopainter.com/store/product.php?id=422). They are fiddly to assemble but do look good.
    When I finally finished the ten-year-old project, I took inventory and found that I still have four more car kits plus enough decals for 15-20 more cars. I doubt that I will build them all but they are fun to look at.