The Freight Yard - 9702C - Reefer, 40 Foot, Wood Sheathed - Central Vermont - 533

Specific Item Information: Micro-Trains Line model decorated by The Freight Yard.

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: During the mid-19th century, attempts were made to ship agricultural products by rail. As early as 1842, the Western Railroad of Massachusetts was reported in the June 15 edition of the Boston Traveler to be experimenting with innovative freight car designs capable of carrying all types of perishable goods without spoilage. The first refrigerated boxcar entered service in June 1851, on the Northern Railroad (New York) (or NRNY, which later became part of the Rutland Railroad). This "icebox on wheels" was a limited success since it was only functional in cold weather. That same year, the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Railroad (O&LC) began shipping butter to Boston in purpose-built freight cars, utilizing ice for cooling.

The first consignment of dressed beef left the Chicago stock yards in 1857 in ordinary boxcars retrofitted with bins filled with ice. Placing meat directly against ice resulted in discoloration and affected the taste, proving to be impractical. During the same period Swift experimented by moving cut meat using a string of ten boxcars with their doors removed, and made a few test shipments to New York during the winter months over the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR). The method proved too limited to be practical.

The use of ice to refrigerate and preserve food dates back to prehistoric times. Through the ages, the seasonal harvesting of snow and ice was a regular practice of many cultures. China, Greece, and Rome stored ice and snow in caves, dugouts or ice houses lined with straw or other insulating materials. Rationing of the ice allowed the preservation of foods during hot periods, a practice that was successfully employed for centuries. For most of the 19th century, natural ice (harvested from ponds and lakes) was used to supply refrigerator cars. At high altitudes or northern latitudes, one foot tanks were often filled with water and allowed to freeze. Ice was typically cut into blocks during the winter and stored in insulated warehouses for later use, with sawdust and hay packed around the ice blocks to provide additional insulation. A late-19th century wood-bodied reefer required re-icing every 250 miles (400 km) to 400 miles (640 km).

From Wikipedia

Road Name History: The Central Vermont Railway (reporting mark CV) was a railroad that operated in the U.S. states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, as well as the Canadian province of Quebec. It connected Montreal, Quebec, with New London, Connecticut, using a route along the shores of Lake Champlain, through the Green Mountains and along the Connecticut River valley, as well as Montreal to Boston, Massachusetts, through a connection with the Boston and Maine Railroad at White River Junction, Vermont.

The Vermont Central Railroad was chartered October 31, 1843 to build a line across the center of Vermont, running from Burlington on Lake Champlain east to Montpelier, and then southeast and south to Windsor on the Connecticut River. Initial plans had the main line running through Montpelier. However, due to the difficulty of building through the Williamstown Gulf, a narrow valley south of Barre, Vermont, and to land interests of Charles Paine in Northfield, Vermont, a course to the west was selected, leaving the state capital to be serviced by a short branch line. Construction began on December 15, 1845, and the first section, from White River Junction west to Bethel, opened on June 26, 1848. Subsequent sections opened to Roxbury on September 17, 1848, Northfield on October 10, 1848, Montpelier (including the branch from Montpelier Junction) on June 20, 1849, Middlesex on August 30, 1849, Waterbury on September 29, 1849, and the full distance to Burlington on December 31, 1849. The part along the Connecticut River from Hartford south to Windsor opened on February 13, 1849.

On February 3, 1995, the CN sold the CV mainline from New London, Connecticut, to East Alburg, Vermont, to shortline operating company RailTex, which renamed the property New England Central Railroad. RailTex was merged into RailAmerica in 2000. Genesee & Wyoming acquired RailAmerica at the end of 2012. Operations have continued to present as before.

Brand/Importer Information: The Freight Yard was a hobby shop that did custom decoration and special runs of other manufacturers' N Scale products. It sold its custom products under several brands or collections: Premiere Editions, by The Freight Yard and Dreams Design.
It was located in Anaheim, California and then moved to 2006 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Established in the late 1980s, it stopped business under this name by the end of the 2000s.
The Freight Yard was owned and operated by Darren J. Cohen. Darren is now operating North Valley Trains.
The Freight Yard / Premiere Editions runs are usually available in series of two to twelve different numbers (suffixed A to M, with I not used).
The first two digits of the stock number correspond to the release year (9x being 199x, and 2x being 200x).

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