50' Insulated box car, RBWX 64535 and RBWX 64536, HO Scale

HO scale, ready to run. Two prototype correct car numbers available.

Western Fruit Express, Great Northern’s wholly owned private refrigerator car line, bought its last ice cooled refrigerator car in 1954. The company had by then purchased a few mechanical refrigerator cars to haul frozen foods.  

With demand for its large fleet of ice refrigerator cars falling, WFE purchased nominal 50 foot inside length RBL cars with RBWX reporting marks during 1955, 1957, 1960, and 1962, all in the 64000 number series in ascending order as purchased. The January 1966 Equipment Register shows two ‘oddball’ cars, 64535 and 64536. The final lot of 50-foot RBWX cars were 64537 to 64556 built in 1966.

The AAR classified insulated box cars as bunkerless refrigerator cars, class RB, if the cars were insulated to a specific standard. Since the cars WFE purchased were equipped with adjustable loading or storage devices, which could be either horizontal cross bars or interior doors, they were classed as RBL cars.

Moloco’s models are of the unique cars, RBWX 64535 and 64536. The models carry these correct car numbers and a built date of 12-64. These two cars are unique because they are three inches narrower and provide a few less cubic feet of interior room than the 535 cars built before them.

We suspect that these two cars were added to a run of cars that FGE was then building for another party to replace two cars that had been destroyed in derailments.

See GNRHS Reference Sheet 407 for details on the creation of WFE. See also the book ‘The Rusty Dusty’ for details about the development of Great Northern/Western Fruit Express refrigerator car fleet.  Both are available at the GNRHS Company Store.