2025 NASG Convention
The Convention Car
This year's Convention Car will be the Eastern States refrigerator car with plug doors. Eastern States Farmers Exchange was founded in 1918 to serve the farmers of the northeastern United States. It provided them with shipments of seed and fertilizer, as well as transported harvests, such as potatoes. The Exchange eventually merged with the Grange League Federation to form Agway in 1964. Agway effectively disappeared in 1999 when it closed all of its facilities.
The cars are 40-foot cars with the "ERDX" reporting marks. They were built and owned by Merchants Dispatch Transportation (MDT), a subsidiary of the New York Central railroad, and leased to Eastern States Farmers Exchange. The cars were in a group with road numbers from 10000 to 10099, inclusive. They were used by meat and produce packing companies from the late 1940s into the 1970s and could be found all over the U.S.
No S-scale car has ever been factory-produced with this road name (note that Highball Graphics made decals available in S in the past for a modeler to custom-decorate a donor car). At this point in time, the road number of the model car has not been decided yet, but there will only be one road number produced. It will be manufactured for us by American Models. As per usual, it will be available with either hi-rail wheels and couplers, or "scale" wheels and couplers. The car will have a dark-green body color and white lettering and logo.
You will be able to order this car as part of your Convention registration, with the option to pick up at the Convention, or to have it be shipped to your home address for an extra fee. If you are not planning on attending the Convention, you can still order this car, if you are an active NASG member (the membership requirement expires two weeks after the Convention is over, if there are any cars still available).
We do not have a photo we can show directly, but the following are links to a Micro-Trains N-scale model that was produced back in 2003. Our car will look similar.