The announcement from Rapido Trains: https://rapidotrains.com/products/ho-scale/freight-cars/ho-scale-atsf-rr-56-mechanical-reefer Today this highly accurate and detailed model was announced by Rapido Trains. Specifically, the car will be a Santa Fe Class Rr-56 reefer. The prototype cars first appeared in 1955. Even today some of these cars serve on the Burlington Northern as buffer cars and M-O-W cars, a role they also had on the Santa Fe. These cars overlap the ice bunker refrigerator car era by twenty years and these mechanical reefers could be seen trains mixed in with the ice bunker cars. With a very little work this car can be converted into Class Rr-60 and Rr-61 mechanical reefers. Santa Fe converted many of these cars into Class Bx-165 and Bx-202 insulated boxcars. I am very proud to have been very involved in making this car a reality. I started this project about five years ago, pitching it to Craig Walker when he was working in Athearn's Project Development. It was close to being "green lighted" when, several years ago, Horizon Hobby dismissed Craig and a few others in that group. This was totally sudden and unexpected. Craig soon took a position with Rapido Trains. This allowed me to again pitch this project and I found a willing listener in John Sheridan at Rapido. As John gained interest in the project I provided a rationale as to why this would be a profitable venture, plus data, details and photos. I was soon joined by John B. Moore, Greg Silva, and Keith Jordan, all of whom were a wealth of knowledge, resources and suggestions, and were quick to respond to Rapido's questions and needs. Later on, Steve Sandifer and John Signor also contributed to this project. And now we have the car! By the way, I have no financial connection to Rapido Trains. Bob Chaparro Moderator Railroad Citrus Industry Modeling Group https://groups.io/g/RailroadCitrusIndustryModelingGroup
This is probably better located in the Model Railroading Product News section of the forum, but the history here is still interesting. It seems Rapido follows the 'passion project' format of choosing models to build; I think we have seen this a few times in their videos and newsletters. Their story of the M420 is like this too, so its cool that they follow their dreams and listen to other modelers. I think it provides for some very unique and exclusive models like the Turbotrain and a lot of their other offerings. Do you have any information on what cars lasted into BNSF? I have seen a photos posted here of a few old reefers used in buffer service like you said, but haven't done a lot of serious research into them. When I saw the Rapido announcement yesterday, I was half-expecting to see some alternate schemes, but it looks like they are just doing one or two variants of the SFRD scheme. A BNSF patchout version would have been insane. Were these ever repainted or sold off to other roads? It just seems like a limited-appeal project with one roadname and paint scheme. The B-100 had multiple schemes even though it was mostly an SP car. I don't like fantasy schemes, but it would have been nice to see the reefer in some alternate or unique variants. I would like to get some Rapido models, but it seems like they are always slightly outside of my era or railroad. However, it is good to see that they are expanding their offerings with diverse new cars that aren't Canadian prototypes.
The cars are historic, too. The Santa Fe claimed it invented "piggyback" for the special handling--no transferring freight from car to truck prior to local delivery. But there was another reason. Fruit and vegetable (particularly lettuce) growers--a very influential customer--wanted ice reefers because they crisp produce while mechanical refrigeration normally dries it out. So, they tended to boycott roads with mechanical reefers. But the Santa Fe wanted frozen food business. So, they bought reefer semitrailers and hauled them on flatcars. It's not hard to see why the road emphasized the special handling, not the mechanical refrigeration. In any case, these are the first cars the growers decided could keep the lettuce crisp enough.
