Micro-Trains - 49280 - Reefer, Ice, 40 Foot, Wood - Oppenheimer Casing - 8025

Model Information: Micro-Trains introduced this body style in July of 1982. It features opening roof hatches - an innovation for N Scale at the time. The detail of the body combined with the high quality printing makes this tooling an excellent choice for modeling early-20th century billboard reefers. It is particularly well suited for modeling the cars used by pre-war meat packers. The prototype is a 40 Foot Wood-Sheathed Ice Reefer with vertical brake wheel (the wheel itself is horizontal).

Prototype History: In 1924 and 1926, the D&RGW shops in Alamosa built one last class of refrigerator cars, still made mostly of wood: twenty "long" reefers, with a length of 40ft and a capacity of 25 tons (#150 to 169). They rode on Andrews trucks and were designed to have the same capacity as a small standard gauge refrigerator car, to facilitate transhipments at the gauge changing points. In 1967, 12 of these refrigerator cars were still active on the Rio Grande. Today, four long reefers are conserved on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad (#157, 163, 166 and 169), two at the Colorado Railroad Museum (#159 and 167), one on the Georgetown Loop Railroad (#153) and #168 is part of the Sumpter Valley Railway collection.

Road Name History: Sigmund Oppenheimer founded the firm of S. Oppenheimer & Company in 1868. Its first location was 2700 Wabash Avenue, Chicago. Its purposes was to profitably sell animal casings to sausage manufacturers. Sausage casings are derived from a variety of animals: sheep, cattle, hogs and goats. As expected, they come in a variety of diameters and lengths. Oppenheimer used aggressive business methods to create monoply-like operations in Australia, New Zealand and China. The success of these overseas operations and intense competition in the United States (where antitrust laws prevent similar business practices) eventually moved the core of Oppenheimer's operations to Australia.

Today Oppenheimer is a 100% Australian owned and managed private business. They also operate extensively in New Zealand.

Brand/Importer Information: Micro-Trains is the brand name used by both Kadee Quality Products and Micro-Trains Line. For a history of the relationship between the brand and the two companies, please consult our Micro-Trains Collector's Guide.

Manufacturer Information: Kadee Quality Products originally got involved in N-Scale by producing a scaled-down version of their successful HO Magne-Matic knuckle coupler system. This coupler was superior to the ubiquitous 'Rapido' style coupler due to two primary factors: superior realistic appearance and the ability to automatically uncouple when stopped over a magnet embedded in a section of track. The success of these couplers in N-Scale quickly translated to the production of trucks, wheels and in 1972 a release of ready-to-run box cars.
In October 1990 Kadee separated in two companies, with the newly created Micro-Trains® Line Co. continuing the Z, Nn3, and N Scale product ranges, with Kadee retaining the HO range.