PFE reefers were orange

PFE reefers were orange with a 'freight car red' roof/ends.  In about 1962, they went to aluminum/white/light grey roofs with black ends.  By this time, a lot of the 40' ice cars were being replaced with 50' mechanical reefers.    The dual logos on the right side were replaced with the staggered PFE many times.

Steam was long gone by the 60's, and by the 70's the mechanical reefers replaced the ice cars for the most part.  Maintaining mechanical refrigeration equipment and ice dock concurrently  was quite expensive!  I suspect most old ice cooled cars that were still running were in 'ventilator' service.  I remember 40' iced PFE reefers being delivered to the Rock Island's 'fruit house' in Minneapolis in the 60's.  By the 70's, all we saw were 50' mechanical reefers, and even those care were being replaced by trucking.

I worked for the CB&Q in the late 60's - The Daytons Bluff BREX ice house/dock were basically shut down.  Icing of NP or GN reefers headed for Chicago was done by the NP/GN or by a contract truck with raising ramp to ice the old reefers.  The Swift & Armour plants were either mechanical reefers or used trucking to move the frozen meat out.

Jim

PFE Info

If you're really intending to get into PFE modeling, try to find a copy of the definitive book on the subject, "Pacific Fruit Express" by Anthony W. Thompson, Robert J. Church and Bruce H. Jones.  There were many variations in paint schemes (and emulsion coatings) applied to the cars, and that book describes them in detail, along with applicable dates.  There have also been some good articles over the years in Railroad Model Craftsman and elsewhere.  Thompson has been an author for MRH and has some good PFE info on his blog at http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/, especially for earlier eras than what I model.

I model the late 70s - early 80s, and have quite a few models of PFE reefers, all mechanical cars.  By this era, the older surviving cars were a few of the 50 footers like classes R-70-10 and R-70-12, but many of those had the refrigeration units removed, were re-numbered, and placed in top ice vegetable (TIV) service so weren't being used interchangeably with cars that were still refrigerated.  A very few ice cars were still in use into the 70s, again primarily in TIV service.  By then these older cars were mostly wearing newer schemes, like the late-60s and newer large lettering, on orange cars with black (asphalt emulsion) ends and silver roofs (note that PFE had its own shops, and cars that cycled through for work often got new paint on the roof, so surviving older cars could still receive the then-current white roofs).

A 70s model fleet should be dominated by 57' cars, perhaps to the exclusion of all others.  With one of the orders of 57' peak-roof cars (I think) the roof changed to white from the start, and all subsequent new orders, and cars shopped for new paint, got white roofs.  Many models of these have been sold with inaccurate silver roofs.  Sometime in the 70s PFE gave up on the black ends and changed to orange.  There were a LOT of changes made to lettering and heralds, so pay close attention to photos.

"by the 70's the mechanical reefers replaced the ice cars"

yeah, the last PFE ice bunker cars I remember seeing were on the Visalia electric around 1980 or so for the orange crop. They phased out the ice cars on the Santa Cruz branch in the late 50s using 50 mechanical cars....DaveBranum

The Break Up

One more thing for now...

PFE was ordered to be fully split between SP and UP in 1978.  Cars had been lettered SPFE and UPFE for years before that, and even prior to the different reporting marks, there were separate cars being built to UP and SP specifications.  The SP cars got SP's Hydra-Cushion underframe, while UP's received Keystone underframes (maybe others, but I can't recall right off).

Once the fleet was split, SP and UP started using different schemes, but surviving orange cars were still common for many years.  If you're modeling 1978 or later, you'll probably want to mix in some overall white SPFE cars and UPFE cars painted yellow with white roofs.  SP often covered the UP shield on its orange cars with a rectangular applique that said "perishable freight experts."  Intermountain and Red Caboose offer variations on nearly all these schemes, and even include the correct underframe.  Athearn has also offered its 57' car in the RTR line with some nice paint jobs, but its model is by far inferior to the Intermountain models.

Doors got swapped around during maintenance, so in addition to the already common clean door on a dirty car (and vice versa), you could now see orange doors on white cars and so on.

ok, thanks. I'll do some more

ok, thanks. I'll do some more homework and will probably mix the cars to make it more up to date.

Thanks.

Track ballast color needed

Just curious what the color of the ballast would have been in the area of San Rafael or Salinas. Woodland Scenic has several types and since all the pictures I can find are in black and white. Anyone know which one to use? I'm looking at the early 60's for the time scale.

Thanks.

Salinas looked a lot like WS

PFE Article

Rob,

The information you provided is very helpful and you certainly seem to have quite a bit of knowledge about the PFE cars. And I believe I've seen some strings of PFE reefers in some of your blog posts. Any thoughts about doing an article on modeling PFE cars in the 1970's and 1980's?

Tom Patterson