2022 RailKing O Gauge Modern Reefer Cars Announced

February 8, 2022 - M.T.H. Electric Trains will be releasing the RailKing O Gauge Modern Reefer Car in four select liveries in 2022. Each of these unique schemes will be available in limited production quantities and will begin shipping to M.T.H. Authorized Retailers in June 2022.

The coming of the railroad changed the way America ate and drank. Before the iron horse connected every town of any importance to the outside world, most food was grown or produced locally. The arrival of cheap, fast, refrigerated transport — in the form of the woodsided reefer with ice bunkers at each end — enabled local brewers, dairies, meat processors, and other food businesses to become players on a national scale. Among other things, the reefer enabled Chicago to become “Hog Butcher for the World”; in pre-reefer days, livestock had been transported to local markets and butchered as close as possible to the final consumer.

In the 19th Century, ice for reefers was harvested from frozen ponds each winter and stored as well as possible in insulated icehouses. The advent of mechanical ice making around 1900 greatly increased the capacity of the reefer fleet, which at its height consumed over on e million tons of ice annually. Since loaded cars needed to be re-iced about once per day, icing stations were erected around the country on shipping routes that could be as long as coast-to-coast.

Famed railroad historian John H. White referred to reefers as “the most conservative of all American freight cars,” as reefers retained wood frames and sides long after other types of cars had converted to steel construction. Steel reefers like this RailKing model became common only after 1940, and many wood reefers ran well into the 1960s. Mechanical reefers, with self-powered refrigeration units in each car, became the norm in the second half of the 20th century, and the practice of stopping a train to re-ice during shipment gradually disappeared.

Check out each of the schemes in the list on the left.

CUSTOM RUN MODERN REEFER OFFERINGS

In addition to the M.T.H. releases, you can find all the 2022 Custom Run models of the RailKing Modern Reefers that M.T.H. is producing for M.T.H. Authorized Retailers by going HERE.