Colorado Reefers - Part One | 7 Comments - Click Here :

    Oops, I meant to title this "Colorado & Southern Refrigerator Cars". If you've arrived here thinking it was about something else found in Colorado, my apologies!

    This month marks two years of writing this blog (thank you to all who have taken the time to read it!). I started the blog as a means to motivate myself and record my progress building a small exhibition layout (written as an "here's what I did" as opposed to a "how to do it"). My progress has been slow, thus having new material to blog about is hard to come up with. But I try my best to keep it current and up to date, unlike many other blogs on the internet (I also limit my recommended blog list to those which are updated regularly within the last six months).

    The guest editorial below was submitted by my good friend and renowned C&S expert Derrell Poole (my other brother). This will be a three-part series. I'm excited to share it with you, and I look forward to many more. I also welcome guest editorials from other C&S Sn3 modelers (a forum for C&Sn3 modeling if you will?). Drop me a line if you're interested. However, brother d understands that this is a non-profit organization!

All for the good of Sn3. Enjoy!

500 was built several years ago from a PBL kit. The rest are 5 of the OMI kits I've finished so far.

Modeling pre-1919 Colorado & Southern Refrigerator Cars
Part 1

    I've been working on a set of 10 OMI C&Sng steel under-frame (SUF) refrigerators that represent how the cars appeared in 1910. The target period is actually late 1910 (Fall) so by this point the cars were about 18 months old. Still new and still in their original glory (with 500 series numbers to boot).

    A long time ago John Maxwell sent me copies of his field notes on RGS 2101c was Ex-C&S 1116 (516) and in the notes he described sub flooring. We corresponded quite a bit about C&S reefers in general and he made it clear that reefers had insulated floor. He also provided the erecting drawings of both the SUF and the un-built 1908 (type II) cars and in those drawings are described the sub flooring as ordinary (T&G) car siding between the sills (along with various insulating material).

End view including the “customized” siding of 502.

    It makes sense that every plane of an iced car should be insulated. Ice melts and icing cars was a costly venture both in labor and facilities (and the hassle of collecting ice). Every effort was made to make the ice do as much work as possible which means ALL TRUE REFRIGERATORS were equipped with insulated floors – or at least this is what we should expect. Yet not one commercial kit of ANY of the C&S cars offers this feature. And I’ll venture very few if any scratch built cars has the insulated floors. Including mine!

    So I decided the OMI cars I have would address this omission. Certain Sn3 kit makers seem to have the same basic strategy for SUF cars. The objective was to put weight in the cars without using the top of the floor as the location for the weight. I assume this was to aide in weighting open top cars. To do this the wood frames were modified to accept a steel plate and add about 2 oz to the cars for a total of 4oz. Yuk!

    But the provision for that weight turns out to be perfect for the sub flooring which would have been recessed from the bottom face of the stringers by enough to allow the attachment of keeper strips at the joints of the stringers and flooring. And that is what I did.

Order of progression 1-4 on building the sub floor and frame.

The major parts for the sub floor and frame.

The sub floor fits between the stringers. 

0.03” plain plastic under .020” thick siding works perfect.

Sub flooring completed. 

    In the next part of this series, I will describe the general building of these cars and all of the little details I ran into.

Keep the Faith – Model Sn3!

Derrell Poole
Hamilton, MT