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Originally Posted by colorado hirailer:

While I am glad that Coors car is one, and if it is the only one surviving, hurray for

Colorado...BUT....IS that the only one remaining out of thousands of such cars?  Must

be others serving as chicken coops behind barns on ranches and farms somewhere....

Billboard reefers were nothing but standard reefers with advertising.  Most were repainted/relettered after the practice was outlawed by 1937, partially because the cars could carry products that were not what was advertised on the side of the car. (Imagine how upset the management at Swift would be having to use cars decorated for Armour...)

 

Rusty

For anyone interested in billboard reefers, there is a superb book written by Messrs. Hendrickson and Kaminski titled "Billboard Refrigerator Cars". The book is very thorough in its approach and discusses the development and history of the cars, builders and leasing companies associated with this endeavor. The text is accompanied by several hundred illustrations and the book makes for a fascinating read....highly recommended.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Billboar...ickson/dp/1930013221

 

Bob

 

 

Originally Posted by colorado hirailer:

At least that reefer book is a lot cheaper than the caboose book I want.....What I have

wondered when I have seen that book, is:  Has Atlas done all the reefers in that book?

Atlas put out a book "The ATLAS O LLC 40' Wood Reefer Collector's guide - First Edition 2000-2004" that had many of the cars they did. 

Some stunning examples in that book and some really hard to find cars and a great article about Bob Wagner's billboard reefer collection.

 

AND it even includes a thanks to Rich Melvin and OGR for the use of article material for the book.

Last edited by Rule292

While the Coors reefer is a repaint, at least it's a wood-sided reefer, like the originals. Not many of those left. (That Armour reefer is a later steel-sided one, of course.) It's no surprise there are so few of them left, given that wooden cars would have a fairly limited lifespan. An original of these woodside reefers would be about 80 years old now!

 

Well, at least here's a Coors "billboard" switcher :

 

(Re: the odd hoppers, Coors operates with a fleet of eleven of these captive covered hoppers to move grain products from the East Silo west to the brewery. These hoppers are custom-equipped with pneumatic gates and electrical hookups tied into timers in the brewing process. This enables the cars to release a precise amount of grain directly into seep tanks at the appropriate time in the brewing process—even if no one’s around!)

 

Last edited by breezinup
Originally Posted by colorado hirailer:

While I am glad that Coors car is one, and if it is the only one surviving, hurray for

Colorado...BUT....IS that the only one remaining out of thousands of such cars?  Must

be others serving as chicken coops behind barns on ranches and farms somewhere....

 

While the Coors reefer is a repaint, at least it's a wood-sided reefer, like the originals. Not many of any kind of old wood cars left. (That Armour reefer is a later steel-sided one, of course.) It's no surprise there are so few of them left, given that wooden cars would have a fairly limited lifespan. An original of these woodside reefers would be about 80 years old now!

 

There are a scattering of old boxcars/reefers you occasionally see out west here on ranches, used for storage or whatever. But they're all old steel cars, at least all the ones I've seen. I saw an old orange Santa Fe map reefer in a field a number of years ago, with the Santa Fe route map on one side and "Route of the Chief" on the other. Pretty cool.

 

Well, at least here's a Coors "billboard" switcher :

 

(Re: the odd hoppers, Coors operates with a fleet of eleven of these captive covered hoppers to move grain products from the East Silo west to the brewery. These hoppers are custom-equipped with pneumatic gates and electrical hookups tied into timers in the brewing process. This enables the cars to release a precise amount of grain directly into seep tanks at the appropriate time in the brewing process—even if no one’s around!)

 

Last edited by breezinup

That would make a pretty neat set, a Coors switcher and three of those hoppers, maybe packaged with a small brewery building. Have to get Coors approval, of course.

 

As most know, Coors was absorbed into Miller Brewing a number of years ago, although they operated semi-autonomously to preserve their identity. However, under the proposed merger of Anheuser-Busch and Miller (actually, their parent transnational corporations), to satisfy anti-trust regulators, Miller reportedly would have to divest itself of Coors, so Coors may operate independently again, if it doesn't get absorbed by another brewer.

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