Part of my recent push to work on reefers involved these three Scale-Craft reefers.

They were all in pretty rough shape and were missing some parts. I decided to put them back to the best condition I reasonably could without being real heroic about it. My main goal for the project was to make use of my newly purchased Tichy OO scale PFE decals. (More on the Tichy decals here). Missing parts were replaced, but I did not change any of the cars particularly compared to how the original builders constructed these pre-war models. Two cars have the frames that have the bolsters away from the ends too far and one has the trucks at the more correct location of models made closer to WWII. With the black trucks on the layout the difference is not very noticeable.

The big thing was painting. I sprayed them with three colors from cans. The sides are the critical item and for that I used Testors Grabber Orange. This is actually a Ford car color but is a good stand-in for PFE orange. The sides were masked off (after that cured thoroughly), then I painted the brown and let that cure and masked again to paint the frame and that strip at the bottom of the sides flat black. The effect came out really well, click on the photos for a better view.

And the decals also really make the cars, they look great. The only thing to note as a big quirk of this decal set is that the logos want to curl up rather than snuggle down! I actually had to put foam and a weight on top of them to hold them down flat after application.

One car it may be noted has the variation of the paint scheme where only one logo is seen per side. That car actually had some paint lift on the side right in the middle, so the logo there covered that.

They are all on trucks rebuilt with the 3D printed S-C bolsters and operate great. I am very pleased how they came out, especially compared to where they started. The sand-cast details are clunky of course but have their own charm, I will enjoy running these cars.