Butter Dish Milk Cars

Here's an American Flyer prewar O gauge car......This one might look better than the current Lionel one.....

Peter

Nice collection, Terry.

I have a Bordens, White Bros, and the K-line 2-tank on flatcar.   I have not seen most of the ones in your collection.  

Bob

Here's a link to a previous Forum thread on milk cars. According to a post on that thread, the butterdish cars were actually reskinned Pfaudler-type milk tankers, which originally looked like ordinary 40' reefers. That would explain why they do not look like any 1930's flat car I've ever seen. The side rails are different. 

And here's a shot of a very similar car belonging to Hood's. You'll have to follow this link; it's the cover shot of a PDF so I couldn't grab it as a JPEG. 

No problem grabbing it as a JPG...

There was an article a few years back in RMC on how to kit bash this car in HO.

I used that article to scratchbuild one in S scale. It is easy to build up the flat car base out of styrene and plastruct shapes. The "butter dish" was made from a roughly shaped piece of wood that I covered with styrene.  A few bent wires for hand rails and some Grandt Line door hardware and brake gear completed the project, except for finding decals and trucks.  It was about as easy a scratchbuilding project as one can imagine.

Little Tommy

There was one of the PSC imports on eBay this past week painted white - only $204.....

Red one a few weeks back for $155 - no idea why I did not buy it....

Nov, there was another white one for $199.06.

Unpainted Overland car back in Oct for $283.88

There was also a decent scratchbuilding article for these in RMC in O scale a decade or so back.

The Overland car is nice, but I still have to paint & decal mine.  Painting is not a challenge; decals are another matter....

Prototype:

Lionel:

Lionel are fun little cars, but a bit short, and the fishbelly flat, and trucks are not correct.  2 tanks could be kitbashed together for a lot less $ than that $200 brass one on eBay!  I seem to remember that Brother Love was scratchbuilding one.

Bob

Thank you everyone.  This has been a great thread. Lots of good leads on how to learn more about this interesting facet of railroading.

Earl 

Haven't found the 2 axle ones I mentioned, but did see one, or two different AF flat cars with dual butter dishes on Ebay. Long for what I've seen in AF, very scale look though. It was 61, or after.

Roger,

Check your e-mail.

Earl