Our sample is decorated as BNSF Ry. no. 799793. The full-size car was part of an order built for the St. Louis-San Francisco at FGE’s Alexandria, Va., shops in 1971.
The model’s dimensions closely match drawings in the 1974 Simmons-Boardman Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia. The distance over the pulling faces was a scale foot too long, but this is typical due to the design of model couplers. Information on the compact disc Freight Cars Illustrated, Vol. 12 states that the reefer was upgraded with a Thermo King SD-711-SR tractor-trailer style refrigeration unit. It’s lettered as a Carrier unit on the model.
Out of the box, the sound was so loud it vibrated the plastic roof, creating a rattling sound. I lowered the volume to approximately 60 percent, which resolved this issue.
Then I placed the car, with its volume adjusted, at different locations in a 15-car (all with metal wheelsets) train pulled by a sound-equipped engine on our HO scale Milwaukee, Racine & Troy. Not surprisingly, the sound-equipped reefer was hard to hear right behind the locomotive. The sound unit had maximum impact when the car was placed mid-train and beyond. Visit our website, www.ModelRailroader.com, to see (and hear) the demonstration.
The refrigeration-unit sounds cycle on and off automatically. The sound cycle lasts just under two minutes.
On DC, the sound decoder started at 7.8V, a whisker above the minimum 7.7V necessary for operation. Per the instructions, the car shouldn’t be run on layouts with track voltage higher than 19V.
The Athearn Genesis 57-foot FGE mechanical reefer is a well-executed model on its own. The sound decoder
is icing on the cake.
Manufacturer
Athearn Trains
1600 Forbes Way, Ste. 120
Long Beach, CA 90810
www.athearn.com
Era: 1971 to present (as decorated)
Road names: BNSF Ry. with Western Fruit Express lettering (mineral red in six numbers). See website
for additional road names.
Features
- McHenry scale knuckle couplers, mounted at proper height
- Metal wheels mounted on plastic axles, correctly gauged
- Separately applied details
- Weight: 5.5 ounces (0.5 ounce too heavy based on NMRA recommended practice 20.1)
- Wire grab irons and stirrup steps
A nice review but no link to actually listening to this model. Somebody hit the oops button please.
Nice photo of refrig but could not see it in actioin.
Both the print article and its clone above both state "visit our website, http://www.ModelRailroader.com, to see (and hear) the demonstration," but I have been unable to locate the video. Could somebody point me towards it? This is my first time to the website, so maybe I'm missing something obvious.
Hey gals and guys, I purchased a couple of these cars a couple months back, really enjoy the strt up and shut down of the refrigeration units. I worked for a while around diesel refer units, and some around carrier units. These cars are pretty darn close to the actual units. So if you have not purchsed these yet, well get ya a couple, they are great.
Athearn has actually produced two quite different groups of these models. One group (four car numbers each for Fruit Growers Express with the traditional yellow sides, FGE ivory with Solid Cold logo, and green Burlington Northern / Western Fruit Express) represent the cars as built, with the refrigeration unit behind grills. The other group (six car numbers each for BNSF like the model in the photo and for ARMN (white Union Pacific) replicate rebuilt cars with part of the sides near one end cut away and a refrigeration unit like those used on highway semitrailers right out in the open. The sounds for the two groups of cars are different; I haven't yet found a place on the Internet where you can listen to both. The models also vary in side sill shapes and rivet patterns according to the paint schemes. The car numbers on the models with and without sound are the same.