Micro-Trains - 049 00 760 - Reefer, Ice, 40 Foot, Wood - Cudahy Refrigerator Line - 1001

Specific Item Information: This 40’ double-sheathed wood reefer with vertical brake wheel is brown with yellow sides and runs on Bettendorf trucks. The Cudahy Packing Company had over 2,000 wood reefer cars by the 1920s, and engaged in the common practice of billboard advertising for their products on the car sides. This Cudahy reefer promotes “Old Dutch Cleanser” on one side and “Puritan” brand hams, bacon and lard on the other.

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: Cudahy Packing Company was a U.S. meat packing company established in 1887 as the Armour-Cudahy Packing Company and incorporated in Maine in 1915. It was founded by Patrick Cudahy (March 17, 1849 - July 25, 1919) and his brother John Cudahy, Irish immigrants from County Kilkenny whose family came to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to avoid the Great Irish Famine. The original business is no longer in existence, but legacies are evident in Cudahy, Wisconsin (established by Patrick Cudahy as a base for his meatpacking business that still exists as the Patrick Cudahy division of Smithfield Foods).

The Cudahy meat packing plant in Chicago, sacked the silica/punice from their Meade County mine for soaking up blood on the kill floor. They also had a subsidiary plant that manufactured cleaning products that utilized the silica. Old Dutch Cleanser was first registered as a trademark for this silica-based cleaning product. Old Dutch cleansing powder was first created by Cudahy Packing, a Chicago-based company specialized in the slaughtering of animals. In 1905, while looking for a way to recuperate animal fat for use in the production of soap, Cudahy Packing became the first company to market cleansing powder. Highly innovative for that time, this unique product completely revolutionized household cleaning, greatly facilitating the task.

By the mid-1920s, Cudahy was one of the nation's leading food companies, with over $200 million in annual sales and 13,000 employees around the country. The business was hit by the Great Depression, but the company still employed about 1,000 Chicago-area residents during the mid-1930s. Following World War II it moved its headquarters first to Omaha and then in 1956 to Phoenix, where it took the name Cudahy Co. In 1957, the company was one of 500 companies listed in the first S&P 500. The company was dismantled in the 1970s, after it was purchased by General Host in 1968. The Cudahy packing business was sold to management in 1981; it was renamed Bar-S Foods. Bar-S was acquired by the Mexican packer Sigma Alimentos in 2010.

From Wikipedia and other sources

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: Micro-Trains Line split off from Kadee Quality Products in 1990. 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.

Micro-Trains Line Co. split off from Kadee in 1990 to form a completely independent company. For this reason, products from this company can appear with labels from both enterprises. Due to the nature of production idiosyncrasies and various random factors, the rolling stock from Micro-Trains can have all sorts of interesting variations in both their packaging as well as the products themselves. When acquiring an MTL product it is very important to understand these important production variations that can greatly enhance (or decrease) the value of your purchase.

Please consult our Micro-Trains Collector's Guide