IndustrialRail Reefer Reassignment

Very nice work!  Looking good.

Looks terrific!  Great job!  

Industrial rail was once it's own entity and was later bought by Atlas O and is now part of the Atlas O line.  They are basically O27 sized rolling stock, locos and trollys.  

Shooting from the hip here, but maybe that car was supposed to be a "mechanical" reefer, not requiring roof hatches for ice?  Otherwise, nice job!

Good work on the ice bunker fix.

                                                                                                                                                Logan

Industrial Rail was originally a product line by United Model Distributors, which once competed strongly with Walthers and JMC to supply hobby shops with various products.

UMD’s Industrial Rail trains were all traditional sized, with some actually scaled closer to S gauge to run on O gauge track. The firm sold the line to Atlas (specifically the Atlas O subsidiary at the time), which continued to produce the trains for some time.

I’m not sure if the line got lost in the Sanda Kan factory fiasco around 2009 (long story) or if Atlas simply decided the market for traditional sized trains wasn’t profitable enough for the company, but the brand isn’t part of Atlas’ product line any longer, at least as it pertains to its O scale locomotives and rolling stock.

Jim R. posted:

Industrial Rail was originally a product line by United Model Distributors, which once competed strongly with Walthers and JMC to supply hobby shops with various products.

UMD’s Industrial Rail trains were all traditional sized, with some actually scaled closer to S gauge to run on O gauge track. The firm sold the line to Atlas (specifically the Atlas O subsidiary at the time), which continued to produce the trains for some time.

I’m not sure if the line got lost in the Sanda Kan factory fiasco around 2009 (long story) or if Atlas simply decided the market for traditional sized trains wasn’t profitable enough for the company, but the brand isn’t part of Atlas’ product line any longer, at least as it pertains to its O scale locomotives and rolling stock.

Thank you for sharing that information. The box for this piece lists United Model Distributors, Inc. located in Wheeling, IL. (not too far from me).

PRR1950 posted:

Shooting from the hip here, but maybe that car was supposed to be a "mechanical" reefer, not requiring roof hatches for ice?  Otherwise, nice job!

 

That thought occurred to me too, but the problem with that is the car does not include any kind of venting or grilles that would have been needed to ventilate the cooling compressors and coils.

Very nice work Erica Ann. Trumptrain ( Pat ) said it all about industrial rail. It is still a nice line of freight cars at a reasonable price.........Paul 2

Erica Ann, nice work on the reassignment paint job and the hatch decal, too!

Rusty

Outstanding work Erica Ann

EXCELLENT job! You are obviously a pro at this type of model decoration!

EricaAnn posted:

PRR1950 posted:

Shooting from the hip here, but maybe that car was supposed to be a "mechanical" reefer, not requiring roof hatches for ice?  Otherwise, nice job!

 

That thought occurred to me too, but the problem with that is the car does not include any kind of venting or grilles that would have been needed to ventilate the cooling compressors and coils.

First: good work; I do like someone who makes a thing into what she wants.

I'm an admirer of IR products. Very high quality. These "reefers" have a reasonable scale-ish look (some real reefers were under 40'); the trucks are too modern for most of these, per the approximate era, but they roll very well. I have a number of them. 

In fact, these cars seem to represent plug-door insulated boxcars, not reefers, even though they were marketed as reefers. The door "plugs" the opening - on the model it should be flush with the car sides when closed; it slides back and forth and pops in and out for a seal. Insulated boxcars are similar to a Thermos bottle; they have no machinery or ice hatches (as reefers do, per type), but do keep something at or near its original temperature for quite a while.

These are nice cars, "protruding" door and all; a long string looks good behind even a scale locomotive. They were cheap a number of years ago; not sure about now. 

Erica Ann,

For more info on Industrial Rail, here's a link to a website focusing on the pre-Atlas Industrial Rail O gauge Line.  As others have mentioned, apparently Atlas O discontinued this product line awhile back.  Note that the website shows a number of different PFE reefers that they made.

http://www.blueboxtrains.com/

Hope this helps,

Bill

Very Cool Erica. I have a friend at work that I gave a beat up old flyer engine to and you should see what John did with it. I love to see talent at work.

You can paint my boxcars anytime, very nice work!  I have a bunch of the IDR stuff somewhere in boxes, I should donate some of it to the cause.

Atlas Industrial Rail (IR) made a terrific small 4-4-2 Atlantic steamer. It's about the smallest O gauge steamer I've ever seen, definitely done in 3/16's "S" scale, and it looks great hauling small Marx freight cars. It's cab and boiler and it's tender are inches smaller than a Lionel #1656 0-4-0 switcher. This IR Atlantic is hard to get ahold of now as their diminutive size makes them a valued catch for us "SmO" {small O} pike operators...

Skip

Never saw the Industrial Rail Atlantic, pretty interesting.