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.

McKeen Motor Car Arrives on the Copperopolis Road

McKeen Number 99 stops at Milton to discharge passengers for the waiting stage to Church's Mineral Springs. The Stanley Mountain Wagon is by Mokelumne River Models.

A new 55-foot McKeen motor car has been seen putting along the tracks east of Stockton. It appears that the railroad's management has seen fit to experiment with yet another motor car. It is anticipated that this car will be used in lieu of a comfortable coach pulled by a reliable steam locomotive. Time will see if the public will accept this new mode of transportation.
   

This view shows the boat-like design of the motor car with a sharp "bow" and rounded "stern."

 In reality, the car is an old Ken Kidder model from the '50s-'60s. I had purchased this car back in the 1990s but the motor/transmission had played out and so the car had been side-tracked  on the shelf until recently. The delay has mostly been due to getting the proper sound from the car. Nobody makes an off-the-shelf McKeen motor car sound so I had to devise one myself. The decoder used was a Loksound model modifed for the new car. I used a Galloping Goose as the basic motor sound. The whistle was recorded by me a couple of years ago in Carson City where the only running McKeen car is kept. The whistle is original as well.
     

The big trouble with the Goose sound is that starting of the Goose is by an electric starter where the McKeen was an air-starting engine, a completely different sound. I solved that problem by splicing out the electric starter and splicing in the air-start sound from an Alco locomotive. The same thing was done with the whistle and the bell. Learning the Loksound programming method was a project but it turns out that it is straight-forward once you learn the program's arrangement.
      Powering of the car is by a Stanton drive which is a very slick way to do the job. The unit has the motor and gearing in one unit with 4-wheel pickup. The wiring is such that the drive can be used for DC or easily rearranged for DCC. Wipers on all of the front truck wheels added to the pickup.The car was painted after the original paint scheme as reproduced by the Nevada State Railroad Museum.
     The motor vehicle shown in one of the photos is a 3D printed model of a Stanley 12-passenger Mountain

The underside of the Stanton Drive showing the electrical 

pickups and gearing. The truck sideframes are glued on

spacers attached to the drive.

Wagon of the same vintage as the McKeen. It is made by Mokelumne River Models (www.mokrivermodels.com) and is a very good reproduction. I highly recommend their products. Lastly, this style of motor car was not made until about 1910. They were used on the Stockton & Copperopolis from that time until around 1920 but, by then, the line was a part of the Southern Pacific. Why have the car on an 1895 railroad? I like McKeens and plan to have a couple or so more eventually. Model Railroading is Fun!