This cars confuses me. It's clearly a box car but it says "REFRIGERATOR CAR" on the side, what gives? Did MTH make a mistake with the catalog picture? I realize sometimes their catalog pictures are not completely accurate, anybody know if this car actually came this way?
Thanks for any help,
John.
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Maybe I'm living in the wrong era. Every Lionel Refrigerator I own is tutone with a ID plate over doors stating such. IMHO, this is another one of MTH's "Fantasy" pieces 
. If I'm wrong so be it. I only collect 1910-1932 and have been doing so for over fifty-years. The next thing you know, tinplaters will be counting rivets and wanting prototypical carrier paint on tinplate locomotives.
The picture is correct. I own one of those cars and it looks just like the picture. It is a 514 boxcar with "Refrigerator Car" painted on the side. The earliest reefers were nothing more than boxcars insulated with sawdust in a double wall - I suspect the decoration on this car is based on a very early ATSF prototype, but that is just a guess. In any case, as HP points out, it's a "fantasy" item. But then, everything in Standard Gauge, original or repro, is a fantasy except the superlative Lionel Hiawatha and Commodore Vanderbilt from 2001. So be it. I run that car in a train of repro 500 series cars behind a repro 385E. Other items in the train include a 515 tank car that somebody chrome plated, a 512 gondola painted dark green, a repro 514R reefer decorated for "Battleship Hams," and a repainted 517 caboose that looks like a Coal Train caboose except the windows are brass instead of orange. I'm not a serious collector; I have a few original or correctly restored pieces but for me, Standard Gauge is just for fun. My favorite SG freight car is the MTH 214R reefer decorated for Robin Hood Beer.
Access to this requires an OGR Forum Supporting Membership
