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.

Hammersmith

A recent trip to San Francisco gave me an opportunity to visit a lesser-known landmark, the Hammersmith building.  Located at 301 Sutter Street, it was built in 1907 just after the 1906 quake and fire that destroyed much of San Francisco proper.  It has retained its historic architectural character despite having been home to a variety of businesses over its nearly 120 year existence.  The current tenant is Zoox, using the building as a "rider lounge" for their robotaxi service...I'll return to that shortly.

Out of all the beautiful buildings in a city packed with fantastic architecture, why visit this structure?  Because Scale Structures Limited produced an HO scale kit for this ornate pile that has always caught my eye and I wanted a closer look at the prototype inspiration.  I say "inspiration" because while the SS Ltd model looks like the Hammersmith from three feet away, the details are less than perfect, by a wide margin.  The general proportions are off as well, with the kit including a brick extension on one side; a concession, perhaps to the "millwork" kit they offered which provided a rudimentary interior with floors and staircases.  

The major discrepancy, besides the brick extension, is the arrangement of floors.  A post card from the time of the building's opening describes the layout; a first floor showroom, mezzanine, second and third floors, and a basement (with a description of what was included on each floor, though I don't need to go into those details here).  The kit only gives you a very tall first floor with a second and third floor above that.  The mezzanine windows of the prototype were replaced by some ornate panels in the kit.  From the outside it is clear that there's a floor there - though no longer open to the first floor below as a mezzanine would have been, by definition.  A large rosette adorns the ceiling of the "mezzanine" level and I suspect it would have been visible from the showroom.

Enlarge the image for a closer look at the Mezzanine ceiling rosette.

I don't intend this post to seem like such a harsh kit critique of an old kit.  To be fair, I can imagine that SS Ltd might not have have the most accurate source material to work with back in 1982.  And, at that time, prototype fidelity mattered less than the general impression, an idea I still endorse.  None of this matters if you simply want a lovely Art Nouveau structure for a corner location.  The castings, while not accurate to the prototype, are still in keeping with the style.  However, it's worth saying that if a person wants an accurate replica of this "jewel box", they may have to do some significant kit modifications or start from scratch with design software and a 3d printer.  

Anyway, back to Zoox.  The company was offering free rides to promote their service in the city.  My wife and I had never been in a self driving car - in fact, it was my first ride in a fully electric car of any sort.  The experience was surreal; familiar yet novel.  It was only a short tour around a couple blocks to demonstrate the car's capabilities, but it was comfortable and we felt safe.  The car navigated the traffic, including pedestrians, without any difficulties.  We came to see the historic building and ended up riding in a futuristic car.  Go figure.

Your blogger, buckled up for safety.  Note the MUNI "sunset" scheme hoodie.
More on that in a future post...

Because You Asked

...or maybe you didn't, but if you ended up here looking for prototype information on the Cooling Tower that comes with the Suydam (or Ayres or Alpine or California Models) Union Ice Company, you're kinda sorta in luck.  After spending too much time scouring the inter-webs for that elusive image, this is the best I could come up with:

State Refrigeration Terminal, Embarcadero front and cooling tower. 1935.

Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf0v19n9mx/?order=1

 

Not bad.  1935 is only a few years off my late 20's era.  Wrong coast, but that's okay.  Not an exact match when it comes to the corners - that angled corner sure is neat but at this point there's no way I'm going to redo 8 baffle assemblies.  Still, it looks pretty good.

 

What really excites me about this image, however, beyond the 'squint analysis'* are the braces.  So much so that I ordered some Evergreen styrene channel and angle to get this feel on my tower.  Right click and open in a new tab to get a better close-up look.  At least I think they're channel iron braces.  That's what I'm going with. 

And it seems I was right to use wood for the baffles, although the texture I had may have too much contrast.  Weathering could tone that down or perhaps a dusting of gray through an airbrush to unify the colors of the wood.  At least the darker, wetter wood near the base of each baffle was a good call.

Here's where things stood this morning:

As of now, all eight baffles have been assembled.  That includes adding corner bracing to stiffen each assembly, applying wood image paper inside and out, and touching up the upper and lower edges with paint.  By the way, if you are building this kit, the gummed paper they provide to assemble the baffles works really well.  At least mine did - your mileage may vary depending on the age of your kit.

And that brings us to the first hitch in the git-a-long, the aforementioned channel irons.  As of this posting my styrene letters have arrived, the LEDs are somewhere between San Leandro and Ukiah, but now I'll have to wait on the styrene channel and angle before I can take this cooling tower any further.  That means I can start on the actual icing deck next, or wait until the LEDs arrive.

*Squint analysis was a technique I picked up long ago in a Bible Study workshop, then again in music analysis class, then again in Seminary!  No doubt it works in other fields as well.  To get the gist of a text's (or composition's) major structure, squint enough to blur the words (or notes) but still see the major groupings of things.  Some useful insights can be found using this technique.

Peak Peeve

Okay, this may sound like a criticism, because it is.  However, I offer it in the most constructive and encouraging spirit so please take it as such.  I have a pet peeve when it comes to how modelers treat the roof ridges of their structures.  Too often have I seen what is clearly outstanding work and thoughtful effort put into a model building only to cap it off, literally, with an unprototypical folded strip of paper or some such shortcut, which is then weathered to match the shingles.  No.

If you're going to shingle a roof, the cap shingles along the ridge need to be just that - individual cap shingles laid according to prototype practice.  Modern homes sometimes have a metal ridge cap over composite shingles, but that's not what I'm talking about.  If you are modeling a metal roof, then a folded strip of paper or styrene painted to match the rest of the roofing material is perfectly acceptable.  But, if you're modeling an earlier era of shingled roofing then there might be another option - the decorative ridge trim.

Here again however is another tempting trap - to just stand the trim along the ridge by itself.  WRONG.  These ornate trim features found on Victorian structures were made to not only add character to the structure but also protect the ridge.  The trim was flanked by flashing that supported the ornate vertical piece and rested on the top row of shingles on each side of the ridge.  Typically it was cast as one piece or built up to make one unit which was attached to the ridge.

This is easily modeled as I have done by painting paper strips to match the trim and gluing them in place.  Simple.  After all have been applied I will go over the trim and strips with a second coat of paint to cover any imperfections.  In this photo you can hopefully see the strips applied beneath the ridges in the front while the others in the back do not yet have it.  The strip in this case is 1/16" wide (high) and trimmed to fit, in order to give the right "reveal" to the shingles below.  The paper material is basic brown paper bag, the same as the shingles.

Admittedly we all pick and choose.  We all decide for which details we will pursue prototype fidelity and on which details we will compromise.  Track is perhaps the most common example.  How many layouts have you visited where the rail was either left unpainted or painted a garish rusty red?  And joint bars or turnout details?  I suspect most folks don't add them, but running trains draws the eye to the track and really well done track detail looks terrific. 

I suspect we've become accustomed to seeing less-detailed track in the same way we accept a strip of folded paper as a ridge cap on a shingled roof.  A quick image search for "decorative ridge trim" will bring many prototype examples and the solution to the problem is, in this case, pretty simple.  I think it looks pretty good, too.