New Billboard Reefer Sets from Golden Gate American Flyer
Club
(As Lionel says on the boxes, for
"Ages 21 to Adult"
Private label refrigerator cars have been popular as
club and convention cars recently and the Golden Gate
American Flyer Club started planning for such a car for our
Flyer Fest originally scheduled in 2020. We also wanted
something that commemorated the history of the far west,
where we are located. We even tossed around various ideas
for some little known and extinct west coast breweries,
which, after a few modifications slid into the fictitious
category. We finally settled on Anchor Steam Beer, a
venerable west coast tradition and the oldest of the craft
breweries. Anchor responded quite positively to the idea and
their publicity department and their company historian
oversaw the entire design process of the cars, making sure
that the graphics were authentic and rendered in the highest
quality.
We had decided that we wanted the car to be prototypical
of the era when billboard reefers were common and were
naturally attracted to the wood sheathed ice reefers by MTH
and Lionel. With MTH’s shutdown, we partnered with Lionel,
as we had in the past for our Deep Rock Tank car sets
offered in 2017. Like those sets, they will be assigned a
Lionel number and will be listed in the Greenberg guides in
future years.
Making beer in the far west wasn’t an easy thing in the
mid to late 19th century and that was when Anchor Steam®
Beer was born. San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Company is one
of America’s oldest breweries, with an extraordinary
heritage dating to the California Gold Rush. Its first
brewmaster, Gottlieb Brekle, arrived in San Francisco in the
1850s. He founded Golden City Brewery in 1871, which, in
1896, became Anchor Brewery. In 1965, Fritz Maytag rescued
the struggling brewery from bankruptcy, at a time when
mass-produced, mass-marketed beer completely dominated the
American brewing landscape. Together, Maytag and Anchor
ignited a revolution that paved the way for today’s
craft-beer movement.
Anchor Steam® Beer derives its unusual name from the
19th century when “steam” was a nickname for beer brewed on
the West Coast of America under primitive conditions and
without ice. While the origin of the name remains shrouded
in mystery, it likely relates to the original practice of
fermenting the beer on San Francisco’s rooftops in a cool
climate. In lieu of ice, the foggy night air naturally
cooled the fermenting beer, creating steam off the warm open
pans. Once a nickname for any Californian or West Coast beer
brewed under these conditions, today the name “steam” is a
trademark of Anchor Brewing and applies only to the singular
process and taste of their flagship brand - San Francisco’s
original Anchor Steam® Beer.
The cars are available as a set of two for $160 plus $15
shipping for the set. We have the cars in stock for
immediate shipping or local pickup. The cars bear two different
numbers, 5020 and 5021. (our Fest was originally scheduled
for 2020) While both cars have the same decorations,
each side has different graphics and car 5020 has a gold
roof and car 5021 has a blue roof. When the cars are coupled
together with the different graphics on the same side, they
appear as two distinctly different cars and not just cars
with a different roof color.
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