Billboard Reefers

  Coors reefer at the Colorado Railroad Museum.

While I am glad that Coors car is one, and if it is the only one surviving, hurray for

Colorado...BUT....IS that the only one remaining out of thousands of such cars?  Must

be others serving as chicken coops behind barns on ranches and farms somewhere....

Billboard reefers were nothing but standard reefers with advertising.  Most were repainted/relettered after the practice was outlawed by 1937, partially because the cars could carry products that were not what was advertised on the side of the car. (Imagine how upset the management at Swift would be having to use cars decorated for Armour...)

 

Rusty

So...was the Coors car a repaint, probably by the Colorado RR Museum at Golden, back to classic colors from a generic reefer found somewhere?  And "most" means a few MAY have survived in billboard livery, if highly faded.

  Yes the Coors car is a repaint .I've got pictures somewhere from over 30 years ago when it looked like it came out of the paint shop. Now it's pretty faded.

  There is an Armour reefer at the museum in Grapevine Texas.

It's a repaint they did for the museum.  It used to be a Western Fruit Express Insulated Reefer.  Bummer.

 

Choo-choo Mike and Breezinup - thank you for your posts through.

 

--Greg

If your question includes "map reefers", then yes, they are all over the south plains of TX being used as insulated storage barns.

For anyone interested in billboard reefers, there is a superb book written by Messrs. Hendrickson and Kaminski titled "Billboard Refrigerator Cars". The book is very thorough in its approach and discusses the development and history of the cars, builders and leasing companies associated with this endeavor. The text is accompanied by several hundred illustrations and the book makes for a fascinating read....highly recommended.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Billboar...ickson/dp/1930013221

 

Bob

 

 

At least that reefer book is a lot cheaper than the caboose book I want.....What I have

wondered when I have seen that book, is:  Has Atlas done all the reefers in that book?

Atlas put out a book "The ATLAS O LLC 40' Wood Reefer Collector's guide - First Edition 2000-2004" that had many of the cars they did. 

Some stunning examples in that book and some really hard to find cars and a great article about Bob Wagner's billboard reefer collection.

 

AND it even includes a thanks to Rich Melvin and OGR for the use of article material for the book.

Here are most of Lionels 9800 series billboard reefers.

 

While the Coors reefer is a repaint, at least it's a wood-sided reefer, like the originals. Not many of those left. (That Armour reefer is a later steel-sided one, of course.) It's no surprise there are so few of them left, given that wooden cars would have a fairly limited lifespan. An original of these woodside reefers would be about 80 years old now!

 

Well, at least here's a Coors "billboard" switcher :

 

(Re: the odd hoppers, Coors operates with a fleet of eleven of these captive covered hoppers to move grain products from the East Silo west to the brewery. These hoppers are custom-equipped with pneumatic gates and electrical hookups tied into timers in the brewing process. This enables the cars to release a precise amount of grain directly into seep tanks at the appropriate time in the brewing process—even if no one’s around!)

 

 

While the Coors reefer is a repaint, at least it's a wood-sided reefer, like the originals. Not many of any kind of old wood cars left. (That Armour reefer is a later steel-sided one, of course.) It's no surprise there are so few of them left, given that wooden cars would have a fairly limited lifespan. An original of these woodside reefers would be about 80 years old now!

 

There are a scattering of old boxcars/reefers you occasionally see out west here on ranches, used for storage or whatever. But they're all old steel cars, at least all the ones I've seen. I saw an old orange Santa Fe map reefer in a field a number of years ago, with the Santa Fe route map on one side and "Route of the Chief" on the other. Pretty cool.

 

Well, at least here's a Coors "billboard" switcher :

 

(Re: the odd hoppers, Coors operates with a fleet of eleven of these captive covered hoppers to move grain products from the East Silo west to the brewery. These hoppers are custom-equipped with pneumatic gates and electrical hookups tied into timers in the brewing process. This enables the cars to release a precise amount of grain directly into seep tanks at the appropriate time in the brewing process—even if no one’s around!)

 

Now which catalog were those Coors hoppers and the engine in ....the Lionel or the MTH?...I must have missed them

That would make a pretty neat set, a Coors switcher and three of those hoppers, maybe packaged with a small brewery building. Have to get Coors approval, of course.

 

As most know, Coors was absorbed into Miller Brewing a number of years ago, although they operated semi-autonomously to preserve their identity. However, under the proposed merger of Anheuser-Busch and Miller (actually, their parent transnational corporations), to satisfy anti-trust regulators, Miller reportedly would have to divest itself of Coors, so Coors may operate independently again, if it doesn't get absorbed by another brewer.

Well, with the ownership changes, and since I think Miller has a Miller Eng. lighted beer

sign, (and I was told the the current? owner of Coors would not approve a sign),

maybe now Miller Eng. can make one.