The announcement from Rapido Trains:
https://rapidotrains.com/products/ho-scale/freight-cars/ho-scale-atsf-rr-56-mechanical-reeferToday 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
