My wife and kids recently purchased some HO Scale Chateau Martin Wine cars on ebay and gave them to me today for my 39th birthday as presents. The cars are older HO kits of these cars, but they do reflect the overall character of the real cars that actually operated on SP's Montpellier Branch.
For those of you who don't know about the Chateau Martin Winery, it was located in Waterford, California on the Montpellier Branch line. The company's wine cars were very distinctive and colorful in contrast to the standard boxcar red of most other freight cars seen in trains during the 1950's. Chateau Martin shipped their wine across the country to eastern markets. It was not uncommon to see the Chateau Martin Wine cars in large east coast citys like New York City.
Though my layout does not depict the town of Waterford, I knew that I needed to have a few Chateau Martin Wine cars in my fleet of freight cars. This way, they can be in the freight consists of SP trains passing through Oakdale. By having these cars on hand, I can model the look and feel of this historic industry to the region I model, without actually having to model it.
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