Micro-Trains - 049 00 300 - Reefer, Ice, 40 Foot, Wood - Monarch Foods - 14290

Specific Item Information: This 40’ double-sheathed wood reefer with vertical brake wheel is grey with decorated sides and runs on Bettendorf trucks. Featuring a large produce mural for Reid, Murdoch & Company’s “Monarch Finer Foods” brand, this reefer was assigned a North Western Refrigerator Line reporting mark and served through the 1930’s.

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: It started with California sunshine and some of the most fertile farmlands in the world. The vast Central Valley where Tomatoes grow plump and ripe, and Peaches sweet and juicy. Begun in 1853, shortly after the California's Gold Rush, Monarch's pioneering food processing and distribution expertise has begun!

Today, Monarch's premier role as an International Marketer stretches to a vast range of canned packaged Seafoods, Fruits, Vegetables, Beans, Juices, Condiments and specialty foods processed and marketed around the world. There are Sardines from Morocco & Thailand; Tuna, Corn, and Pineapple from Thailand; canned Mushrooms from China; Hot sauces and Squeezed yellow Mustard from USA; Iodized salt from KSA & USA; Peanut Butter from USA, and California Grape leaves. This is to name but a few of the more than 500 quality food products marketed under the renowned brand Monarch.

Monarch growers and member farmers carefully picks only ripe fruits and vegetables and deliver them to nearby processing plants for canning. All our products are proecessed within 24 hours of harvest to insure freshness and consistency. We also have quality control check points at all levels of processing and canning to insure consistent quality products alwyas. And we have one of the highest quality standards in our industry and we follow international and USDA and FDA specifications.

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