REA and Express Reefers

 As a general rule nearly all express reefers were operated by REA. This included those cars lettered for individual railroads. Not all Express Reefers (Br) operated in this manner, but the railroads that operated the largest fleets of Br cars did this (SP, PRR, ACL to name three).

As a layout owner who has strange tastes, I like the look of passenger trains made up of older cars, heavyweights, Pullman green, Mail & Express. I do not like publicity photo trains.

I think there are huge opportunities to be had from switching passenger trains. Not just a few cars, but blocks of cars going to the Post Office, the REA, Produce Markets, Grocery Wholesalers.

So I’m ready for this by owning a fairly large consists of head end cars. 

When a train arrives from staging it will have a large block of head end cars to set out. Following sections will probably be a significant part of the op sessions. As discussed in past blogs, transfers from other roads of head end cars will be common. 

I’m not sure of the play value to be had from private road name express reefers being operated by REA.

For example I just acquired, by accident, a L&N express reefer. This is one of the roads that is not operated by REA. 

-SO- 

this car arrives in a block of reefers in the 2nd section of train 28. The L&N car is loaded with some non-descript type of produce along with several other cars (Two PFE, two PRR, two REA, one ATSF, and one GN). As far as I know, right now, these cars are all going to be handled as per their waybills. 

I also know that these non-affiliated cars CAN NOT be loaded or managed by REA.

If you have a procedure established that requires your crew members to fill MTY car requests for express reefers to be spotted and loaded at your REA, I’m  guessing these MTY car requests must only be filled with affiliated reefers.

Other than that I can not see any added play value, ON THE MODEL RAILROAD, to these difference.

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