Any reader that follows OO on eBay has probably noted some printed car sides offered recently by a seller. These are not vintage items but rather are newly produced. I decided to check out a set, and at this point own six sets.

The first set purchased was this one. The color, as the seller noted in the listing, is a bit off, darker, compared to the prototype. The sides are nicely printed on thin white cardstock. But the really important element for me was is this side scaled correctly for OO?

At first I thought it under scale when I put it next to the typical OO reefer. Then I did some measuring and discovered that hmmmm, the issue is not that the sides are too small but the typical cars are a bit too big! Picard made several lengths of bodies for example and the most commonly seen size is 42’. These sides are for a 40’ car. Digging around I found a few possible cars for 40’ sides and I purchased the other sets in another lot. The seller described those PFE sides as being “weathered” and the color is closer to accurate for the prototype.

I will build up at least a couple of these using junker bodies in stock in the near future. I will follow up further with how they work out then.

The other final thing to randomly note is the seller sent these out to me with cool vintage stamps, not modern stamps. You may not get lucky in terms of stamps if you purchase these but I know I plan to save the envelopes.