Evemodel - C15016-D - Reefer, Ice, 40 Foot, Wood - Merchants Despatch - 17210

Prototype History: In 1924 and 1926, the D&RGW shops in Alamosa built one last class of refrigerator cars, still made mostly of wood: twenty "long" reefers, with a length of 40ft and a capacity of 25 tons (#150 to 169). They rode on Andrews trucks and were designed to have the same capacity as a small standard gauge refrigerator car, to facilitate transhipments at the gauge changing points. In 1967, 12 of these refrigerator cars were still active on the Rio Grande. Today, four long reefers are conserved on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad (#157, 163, 166 and 169), two at the Colorado Railroad Museum (#159 and 167), one on the Georgetown Loop Railroad (#153) and #168 is part of the Sumpter Valley Railway collection.

Road Name History: Merchants Despatch Transportation called East Rochester, NY home and most of its railroad cars were built there starting in 1898. Here are several illustrations scanned from a 1928 MDT 12-month calendar showing some of the different cars and specifically refrigerator cars that were built by MDT for different purposes.

The Merchants Despatch Transportation Company (MDT, also known as the Merchants Despatch Refrigerator Line) was established in 1857 or 1858 by the American Express Company of New York (then a freight forwarding service). The entity was reformed as a joint stock trading company on June 1, 1869, with ownership divided among the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railway (CCC&I), the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, and the New York Central Railroad (NYC), all part of the Cornelius Vanderbilt rail empire.

From Wikipedia