Frequent readers of this site should be familiar with the name Temple Nieter. If not, he was a pioneer in American OO who promoted OO enthusiastically until his passing in 1984. I own only one Temple Nieter model, a reefer, described in this article.

That reefer provides a good comparison to these two Nieter models, a boxcar and a reefer, in photographs shared by reader Lon Walker. I will start with the boxcar. The Lake Line was the personal road of Temple Nieter and the car is neatly hand-lettered. Note that the model is an X29 PRR boxcar. This is significant as Nieter actually advertised this very model for sale. Production must have been very limited (Nieter was an electrical engineer by profession), but whatever was sold should be a very similar model, it is worth looking your collection over to see if you can find another car of the same type. The doors look to maybe be Nason castings though, perhaps added at a slightly later date. The ends of both cars are plain.

Looking at the bottom we see a couple more significant things. So let’s say he built this car around 1934. Note that the trucks and couplers are not commercial products. The couplers are the same as those on my reefer, they are a design bent out of sheet metal, a design inspired at least by another pioneer, Howard Winther.  The trucks are very similar to the trucks on early Winther freight cars as well; it is actually possible that Winther made the castings for Nieter.

Turning to the reefer, the sides are lettered differently, this one being the more interesting side. My Niether reefer was clearly rebuilt and lettered with decals at some later point (and lost the early trucks), but this one seems to be all original or closer to it at least with the hand lettered sides. Note the early trucks again and the same style of coupler is present. The hatches, not seen clearly in these photos posted, look like they are likely Nason castings.

Back to the couplers, seen again in this final bottom view, what Nieter noted to me of the design was as follows:

Before my filed SC type [he used a modified SC coupler on his layout that was filed slightly so it would couple automatically] there was Howard Winthers’ made of 1/8 strips of tin-can sheet metal, shaped as a coupler, maybe from 1933! I knew him and adopted his style but quickly added the “hose” wire and the ramp idea on that kind.

Lon has several other cars with this that may or may not be Nieter purchased in the same lot, including a boxcar that has wires from one truck mysteriously running up inside! From his writings Nieter had some ideas about power distribution that were far ahead of his time (more here), one wonders if that car is related somehow. In any case thank you Lon for sharing these photos of these interesting, very early models.