Besides the full floor castings seen on Lionel boxcars, the Nason cast boxcar, and a number of Scale-Craft models (boxcars, stock cars, and late style reefers, plus the “half floor” used on their flat car), there are a number of distinct frame castings which are to be seen on vintage American OO freight cars.

Since Scale-Craft was mentioned already, to begin we have the frame used on the early version of their reefer. It is cast in the same, hard die-casting material as all of their castings. In the photo with it is a similar frame, Graceline, which is a soft metal casting. This frame was also produced by Selley as a separate sale item – and actually Selley also sold a version of the Nason reefer frame and a unique 50’ frame as well. More on that in a bit.

Having just mentioned Nason twice, they made three distinct types of frames seen in this photo. The 50’ frame I have only seen in bronze, probably for the weight as it is for their flat car. The middle frame in the photo is the reefer frame and might be the Selley version of this. I have seen this casting in aluminum and in soft metal, this one is soft metal. It would be easy to just say the aluminum version is the Nason version, but if that is the whole story I don’t know, they sold cars for a long time with a series of owners. It is fish belly in design though, which visually defines it from their boxcar frame which is straight. The idea I think they had was that the reefer frame is for a wood car and the boxcar frame is for a steel car. It also came with their gondola kit.

Next up are the Eastern frame and the two versions of the Famoco frame. The early version of Famoco is the unmarked frame; later production split the frame in half to avoid shorts due to the trucks potentially getting rotated and picking up electricity from opposite sides of the track. The Famoco frames are of a hard die casting metal and the Eastern frame is a soft metal casting.

The next three frames are for Hawk cars. These are not real common; the 50’ frame is for their double door boxcar, the 40’ fish belly frame is associated with their boxcar and gondola, and the short frame (with the nice rivet detail) is for their caboose. The material is a soft metal and might actually just be straight lead from the look and feel.

Finally we have these three frames. The one at the top is the Selley 50’ frame, mentioned earlier and not a part of any kit, but it would have been handy building up a Picard 50′ body. It is soft metal. The bottom one is also soft metal and is from the very rarely seen Hoffman kits. The middle one is sand cast bronze and is … a mystery. I have two of these. If it was just some project part made by someone back in the day or part of a very obscure kit or part line I don’t know. The fish belly is slightly canted to one side giving it more of the feel of the project of some individual.

Knowing what type of frame casting a car has can be helpful in identifying a model, but to close keep in mind that there was nothing to stop someone from using a different frame casting on something else. It was their model railroad after all, and hopefully they were happy with the results.