Life Like Oscar Mayer reefer car HO

[MilwRoader_Steve]

LHS has a Life Like Oscar Mayer refrigerator car for $6. Any opinions on the quality and what would be needed to bring it up to date?

What child of the 60s wouldn't want an Oscar Mayer car?

 

[trailrider]

Depends on what you mean by "up to date"? If you are modelling an era after December 31, 1989, the roof walk would have to come off, and the access ladders shortened accordingly. However, until that time, the roof walk is okay. Otherwise, it depends on how much work you want to do. First thing I would do (and have done to mine) is to replace the hook-horn couplers with Kaydee's. (Not sure if the couplers are truck-mounted. In which case you might either replace the trucks or just cut off the coupler pockets and install body-mounted ones.) A more extensive project would be to carefully remove the cast-on handrails, and replace with wire ones. You might want to weather the car some, depending on what year you model and how long the car has been in service.

 

[santafewillie]

I have that car in one of my boxes of out-of-date stuff.

Mine is missing an axle though.
At the very least, you need to trade out the truck mounted horn-hook couplers for Kadee couplers.

There's two ways of doing this. You could use the truck as is and replace the coupler with a Kadee # 24 series underset coupler, and continue to use the truck mounted coupler box.
Here's an example of how I did it back in the day!

Better yet is to cut off the coupler box and use a #5 or a #46 coupler and a Kadee coupler box with a styrene spacer and mount it directly to the body like this. You could use scale couplers if you wish, I don't so I have no picture of that.

The plastic wheels can easily be changed to metal ones for further improvement. I have a few Tyco and LifeLike cars in my current fleet that I have improved.
The Oscar Mayer car has a build date of 1957, so I don't believe it falls into the category of "Billboard Reefer" which were outlawed in the '30's sometime. Folks back then realized that the cars with Schlitz, Miller or Coors painted on the sides had beer in them and often helped themselves to some of the contents! The practice was outlawed due to safety concerns of unloading in a non-approved zone. Not that build date matters to some model railroaders.
Buy the car if it is still available and use it to improve your modeling and weathering skills on a cheap car. I think that I originally paid $1.29 for mine.