Atlas Billboard Reefers, Who has all of them?

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.

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. 

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. 

I agree.....I think Steve (Mr Muffin) has them all......

Peter

That's a lot of reefers!  WOW!

I have all of the 6700 series - 50 in all.  Collected most of them quickly but the last few took several years to find.

I found the last one I needed - Cook's Beer - at last April's York.  My first York trip.  Stumbled on it 15 minutes after walking into The Orange Hall on Thursday.

George

A naive question: Are these modeled after actual cars? All? None? Some?

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

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.

The two Gluek Brewing beer cars are RAREST!

Where were Fauerbach's, and Gluek's located geographically?  Had not heard of

Fauerbach's, which goes back to my reason for starting this thread...there are probably

others that I have not heard of.

Don't see this guy to often.

For me the atlas billblard reefers are my new 6464 boxcars. I sold the 6464's a year ago. I now prefer the reefers.

Bill T:

Very nice...I haven't seen that one. I thought the Cherryland reefer offerings were fairly rare as well. I think I've only seen one up for auction.

I had the entire first run of the reefers but prices got so crazy I sold them. Sold a couple for $800+ Each and allot of the others for $300-$400+ each. Never looked back. 

I have not bought any since. 

Minneapolis, MN

david1: 

I believe it...I seem to recall (with my same disclaimer of being wrong) that Mr Muffin sold his complete first collection and used the funds towards a college education for his kid(s). Who would have thought? 

These are nice cars. I avoided the collector craze on the this one. When I do see them for sale the Beer ones always get snapped up quickly.

Kline made some really nice cars as well, with ice blocks and swinging beef...

one of my favorites, I am told it is rare

Fauerbach's is in Madison, Wisconsin. The company is still around. They stopped brewing beer in 1966 and resumed in 2005. It's a local brew. The company sponsors iceboating and has a web store where you can buy hats, posters, etc. The Atlas car is real, although there is some question as to whether the colors are right since there are no period color photos of the original car. The Atlas car was a special run for a train shop called Dunham's in Ohio. 

I was always under the impression that Atlas O will not make a car that didn't exist. My local hobby shop looked into a special run but Atlas would not consider a fantasy scheme.

And therein is the biggest hiccup regarding Atlas-O's reefer madness strategy and the subsequent demise of the "collecting them all" goal.  Don't get me wrong, they're still the nicest detailed reefers out there for those who demand scale fidelity.  But we all have our limits these days... and it quickly became too harsh a reality that "collecting them all" wasn't gonna happen. 

When the original set of 40' reefers was first announced and delivered, many of us thought these cars were gonna be the modern-day 6464's in terms of collectibles.  But then Atlas-O did some key things that pretty much gave lots of reefer enthusiasts second thoughts... and essentially sealed the fate of "reefer madness" as we once knew it:

• After the first series of reefers had well-defined, limited edition runs... Atlas-O over-produced several subsequent series of reefers.  Heck even today, some dealers still have those cars from over 5-7 years ago and can't give them away.
• Some reefers were only available through lesser-well-known clubs who didn't promote their special-run productions to the masses.  This was particularly true with a few of the Canadian special-runs that didn't have the greatest visibility in the US during the relatively small window for pre-ordering cars that had extremely small production runs.  In other words, it was too easy to miss out on these gems.
• Atlas-O eventually "re-issued" the initial set of 40' reefers -- essentially undermining the collectible value of owning those early reefers.  Very poor move, IMHO.
• Even to this day, Atlas-O continues to offer yet more reefers... So there is essentially no FINITE collection of these to be had.  Whereas the post-war 6464 boxcars had a reasonable number of 30 (or so) cars to "collect", the exact opposite is true for the Atlas-0 reefers. 

Simply stated, there are just TOO MANY to collect.  And reefer enthusiasts like myself decide a long time ago, "The heck with it".  Now when a new reefer announcement happens, I barely even give it a second glance.  And as if having too many 40' reefers wasn't bad enough, Atlas-O added an entire line of 36' reefers alongside the 40' models.  Too much of a good thing, I guess...

I recently sold many of the 36' reefers I purchased, and probably will list a few more when I do another round of "collection thinning" very shortly.  I have decided to keep the 40' reefers on my roster, simply because you just can't beat them when you need a wonderfully long and colorful consist behind articulated steamers or double-headed steam locomotive configurations.  They're absolutely tops for those situations!!! 

But trying to collect them ALL in this day and age when an operators-culture tends to dominate our hobby???  Forgettabouddit!!!

David

Very well stated,David.

It would have been something to see back in the day when there would have been long strings of these reefers rolling along.  As it is, I seem to remember seeing faded or painted cars with faded company logos when I was little.

Norm

We don't have every one produced but we have at least one of each road name..... There were several that were made in two numbers or maybe even four numbers for which we just have one..... Almost all are either on the layout or on display at our place..... I ran out of shelf space so a few cases are still boxed up.....

ToyTrains1 has them all and has a complete photo inventory of all of them.... check out his website.....

I confined my acquisition of these to a few states in a geographic area.   I never had

any thought of collecting all of them, and many, many were produced for areas in

which I had no interest.  This confined me to only a few, luckily.  There were temptations, such as when I visited a brewery museum in Wisconsin (searching for

cars not done in my favored area) and became slightly intrigued with Wisconsin

breweries, of which there were a lot.  I repressed myself from going off on that tangent.  However, if more are (or have been) done for my area, I want to know

about it.

A few of the cars mentioned by posters above (I'm originally from northwestern Wisconsin and the Twin Cities area, so was interested in these cars). The Fitgers and Land O' Lakes were done for a train shop in the Twin Cities area that went out of business years ago now. A little Great Lakes ship is in the center of the small star on the Fitger's car - it was a part of their logo. One my favorites is the Balza's pickles and kraut car (done for a train shop in Green Bay), because it's about pickles and kraut!

I focused on the 40ft version and initially bought everything that came out............  until I hit 60 different ones and my billboard reefer train was complete.  Most I have run at one time actually is about 45 of them.

Link:  https://youtu.be/O1XQv2d96EU 

This train has about 20 or so and looks like a bigger train that it is.   The 12' x 14 ACCR has a limit of about 35 cars with engine typically............... beautiful cars for steam era freight trains.

Mark

the reissue has differences

Breezinup:

That Cherryland and the Balza's pickles are on my wish list....really sharp cars. Thanks for posting!

The Cherryland is a rare bird as it was a special run. The last one I saw on eBay was over $125 when I stopped following the auction.

One I wish they'd issue more of is the original ATSF woodside reefers (as opposed to the rebuilts). The first run had two numbers, followed by a four-number run. It would be nice to have a couple more.

Cherryland and Balza's are very hard to find - especially the first Cherryland car, the plain grey one. The one with the cherries is a little more common. These were special runs for GBTV, a train and appliance dealer in Green Bay, Wisconsin. They have done about seven special run Atlas reefers. I got lucky on both the Cherryland and Balza's cars and managed to find them at semi-reasonable prices. 

While I could not get the entire ToyTrain1 list to open up on this computer, I did see

that Atlas did one "fake"car...a reefer with THAT competing three rail magazine on

the side of it.  There may be others.  There is that problem with B&W photography.

The Fauerbach car in the photo above could be gray, light green, yellow, orange,

or even pink (not likely).  But if the company is still around, maybe an old timer can

be found who saw the prototype.

I think one of the rarest is Natty Boh!  Near and dear to our hearts.

Richie

The grey one. And the second, yellow one.

The second Cherryland car is the only Atlas car I ever sold for significantly more than I paid for it.  A nice change from the usual buy high sell for less paradigm.