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I have not been looking at Atlas reefers on the auction site, for some time, as I had thought the quantity of them being

produced had dwindled.  I just paged through the listing tonight and saw several branded cars I had not seen before.

Marx's slogan was, "One of the many Marx toys, do you have all of them?"  I wonder how many different billboard reefers

Atlas has made so far?  I only acquire(d) a few from a specific region, but I wonder if anybody has all of them to date?
And I think a few cars for the same brand, but different, have been made.

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I believe (and it wouldn't be the first time I'd be wrong about something) that Mr. Muffin may have 'em all; I'm looking forward to seeing his collection one day.

 

I too, have a fraction of what Atlas has produced. The Illinois Onion Growers reefer is the one O gauge item at the top of my wish list. The town referenced on the car is where I grew up; I can still remember smelling the onion sets!

 

There have been hundreds of different ones made. I suppose there may be a few folks in the country who carried their addiction to the extreme and collected most or even all of them. If so, they spent a fortune in money (and time).

 

I wonder if perhaps at some point the thought would cross such a person's mind that some of this money really could have been used toward more meaningful ends. Just a thought.

Last edited by breezinup

To have all, or anywhere near all, the Atlas reefers would require an enormous investment and a very large display space. A friend of mine used to have them all, but he stopped buying several years ago and sold most of the ones he had. It was just too overwhelming to keep up. 

 

I have a pretty substantial collection, but I specialize in beer and wine cars (mostly from Milwaukee or other places on the Milwaukee Road), cars lettered for the Milwaukee Road and its subsidiaries, and the most colorful and interesting of the non-beer cars. I used to buy a lot; now it's half a dozen or so per year. I have no interest in owning them all. I wouldn't have any place to put them. 

 

I would be curious to know which are considered the rarest or most collectible of the Atlas reefers. I'm guessing that the Frank Fehr brewery, Fitger's, and the two Gluek Brewing beer cars  are among the hardest to find. And I don't think I've ever seen a Fauerbach beer car for sale on eBay, at a train show, or anywhere else except Dunham's, the dealer that commissioned the car. 

 

There's a website with what may be a complete set of photos of the Atlas billboard reefers. Here's the link: Toy Trains 1 At the bottom of the page he has a link to a PDF of what he says is a complete list. 

Last edited by Southwest Hiawatha

I have over 30 Atlas Billboard Reefers. Noware near all of them. My collection is split into three groups: 1. Colorful Billboard Reefers mostly meat packing and dairy from the midwest to the east coast. 2. Pennsylvania Railroad associated express reefers. 3. Beer reefers. I have 11 Beer Reefers I am looking for the limited edition Ballantine Beer Reefer to complete 2 six-packs. 

Terry,

These are actual cars for the most part--probably 99%.  There are a couple of "special runs" mixed in like Specklers and maybe a Cascadian Farms.  Len Deichman did a couple also.  Penn Canning comes to mind.

They were really hot when they were introduced.  I have a few and will have to get an inventory sometime.  There was a sense of "gotta have it" when they were released and always with great anticipation.  Toy Trains1 has all of them it seems.

 

Norm

Last edited by Norm

I am from Louisville, so I have the Falls City beer car and two of the Fehr's cars, and

I will be interested if it is the rarest one.  Oertel's '92 was the third beer brewed in

Louisville when I was a kid, and I, when Atlas cars took off,  spent time at the Univ. of Louisville and at the historical society researching old Louisville breweries.  I could not find that Oertel's had a reefer, nor that any of the previous and defunct Louisville breweries did.  One of the old breweries was at the head of Broadway, near Cave Hill

Cemetery, and its cellar caves were just north of Broadway.  A couple of others were farther west just off Broadway, more in the "West End". These came before Fehr's, Oertel's, and Falls City. Hobby Station, a shop in Elizabethtown, Ky., did Falls City, Fehr's, and several other cars for that area.  I think that there were a couple done for

Vissman's packing company in Louisville.  I would like to see a list of all the ones done by Atlas, especailly if it has pictures, or identifies the city or region of the product on the reefer.  Quantity of each produced would be interesting info, also.

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