Better For Baby

In my last post I shared an image from Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Why Michigan?  Because I've been searching for prototype images of billboard refrigerator cars.  A while back I acquired a large set of card and wood sides for HO scale freezers.  I'd like to be able to categorize them by era but also learn about the details of the actual car bodies they'd have been seen on and that means research.

I'm nearly certain I've seen a prototype image of this car:

It wasn't in the Hendrickson & Kaminski "Billboard Refrigerator Cars" book.  It wasn't on the 1900-1930 Era Railroad Modelers Facebook Group.  So where did I see it?  Maybe I'm just imagining it.  Still, there should be an image out there somewhere, so I began digging around online.  Digital collections of railroad images in Michigan seemed a good place to start.  

It didn't take long to find an article on Fremont history that included an image of the Gerber factory in which one end of a GSVX freezer can be seen (Gerber Strained Vegetables).  The source for that image was a post card in the University of Michigan digital image collection.

Fremont, 1936  (citation below*)

Can you spot it?  I didn't at first.  Here's an enlargement, zoomed in on the car in question:

What does this tell me about the car?  Not much, but now I have a few clues for modeling it.  The roof is dark, as is the ladder (or grab irons...).  The hatches appear to be plain, without a larger platform around them.  The biggest unknown remains the underframe.  I'd guess either a deep fishbelly or straight steel, but this picture gives no indication.  Kits are no help here as both options were available; straight from Tenshodo or Varney, fishbelly from Red Ball.  My sides were likely made by Tenshodo.

A helpful comment on the Facebook group mentioned above indicated that the cars were listed in the ORER from 1935 to 1937, a short window of time.  These cars were built in the late 1920s but painted for Gerber in the early 30s.  The ban on billboard reefers went into effect August 1, 1934 with a grace period until January 1, 1938 before they could no longer be interchanged.  That makes this photo a rare thing, showing the car in operation.

Finally, a word about color.  Early kits offered them in the lovely two-tone blue and white but somewhere along the line Tyco made the decision to offer a pink version.  Were there pink ones in real life?  The pink/blue gender colors were suggested in 1918 and well established by the middle of the 20th century so it is possible, especially from a baby food company willing to paint dancing animals on a pastel hued car side.  I think the pink version was more likely a marketing gimmick by toy train manufacturers rather than a reflection of reality, but it would be an exciting discovery to learn they came in both colors.

*"Fremont Michigan". https://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tinder/x-44719/tinder-rppc-089437. In the digital collection David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography. William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. September 13, 2026.