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sorry if a thread about this topic has already been posted, but has anyone seen a model (preferably HO) of these cars yet. I know Tropicana, Cryo and BNSF(with the icicles on top) have quite a few in their fleet and I have been seeing them for close to 10 years now. wondering why a model is hard to find - or maybe im just not looking hard enough.
here is the car im talking about - if my description falls short of accurate.
Cryotrans has cars they converted from Cryogenic cars, which should not be too hard to model. As far as I can tell those Tropicana cars should be do-able from the out of production Walthers Cryogenic reefer too.
The Tropicana cars are custom-built jobs for Tropicana, built by Millennium Railcar in Kansas; they are not the same as the UP and BNSF cars. While they may look similar, there are a world of differences between them. For starters, the Tropicana cars are NOT high-cubes as everyone assumes they are, and they are only about 60' long compared to the BNSF and UP cars which approach 80'.
The TPIX cars actually have similar proportions to a standard 60' insulated boxcar rather than the larger UP and BNSF cars. It is their modern, smooth-side design, however, that fools everyone into believing they are a larger car
That being said, I expect a resin kit of the TPIX car to be released fairly soon. And yes, I do have insider information.
i always thought there was something different between the tropis' and the others but couldnt quite put my finger on it. thanks for putting that mystery to rest. I too am interested in the resin kit. i have friend who models airplanes from scratch and is heavily into resin molding. he would have a ball with these.
