Reefer question

[jim currie]

lived with my great anut and uncle for a couple of years during high school and they had a ice box but no ice man they cut there own ice off the river every winter and stored it in a big dugout packed in saw dust lasted most of the summer but before winter arrived again there was a couple of months of no ice just the spring house to cool things down . ah the good old days.
jim

[Russ Bellinis]

All reefers were cleaned prior to being sent for loading. If they were being loaded with "dry freight" for a return to California (PFE & SFRD) they would not want any left over fruit rotting in the bottom of the car. If being loaded with fruit or meat, they would want the cars clean because they are hauling food. Whether or not the car was pre-cooled depended on what the shipper asked for. Sometimes they would pre-cool, sometimes they would be iced after loading. In any case, in an area where a lot of refrigerated produce was shipped, like So Cal citrus, the icing docks would be located near the packing houses, and the clean out tracks would be located in the yard, most likely near the rip tracks.

[thecitrusbelt]

There was an implication in the post that ice bunker produce reefers might carry meat on the return trip home (to Southern California). Not true. Produce reefers and meat reefers are not interchangeable. Meat reefers (Type RA, RAM and RSM) and produce reefers (Type RS) are not the same and were not used interchangeably. Produce reefers, when they returned home, carried dry loads only.

On the Railway Bull Shippers Group (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Railway_Bull_Shippers_Group/">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Railway_B ... ers_Group/</a><!-- m -->) Doug Harding gave a good explanation about the some of differences between a meat reefer and a produce reefer. Below is what he had to say.

The reason for brine tanks in meat reefers and not other reefers was meat required colder temps than fruit and produce when shipped. The salt enabled colder temps. Thus meat reefers required lots of salt. The only reefers that required more were the frozen food reefers, which also had heavier insulation. But most of these came into play in the 50's and I believe were of a steel design.

Another distinction with all meat reefers, not just those with brine tanks, the ice melt never entered the car proper. The ice bunkers were sealed from the load, so no melt could contaminate the load.

Produce reefers, which might have ice blown on top of the load, were equipped (in later years) with fans so cold air from the bunker could be blown into the load area. You will not find a circulation fan on a meat reefer. The nature of produce/regular reefers were such that water/melt from the ice bunker could be on the floor in the load area. These kind of reefers had drains open all the time, so ice in the ice bunker or ice on the load could melt and run off 24/7. This was the dripping one might experience if track side.

Doug Harding
<!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.iowacentralrr.org">www.iowacentralrr.org</a><!-- w -->

[Sumpter250]

thecitrusbelt !!
Your arrival has awakened a sleeping "ice age" and shed some more light on Reefers / icing

[Russ Bellinis]

Thanks for the clarification, Bob. I've been really busy for the last couple of months and wrote my post in a hurry and looking back over it, I noticed it was kind of ambiguous. I knew that reefers used for produce never hauled meat and vice versa during the ice bunker era, but my post was not clear.

[jwb]

This is not to say that reefers of lines generally associated with produce, such as PFE, were not sometimes rebuilt to haul meat. According to Tony Thompson's PFE book, PFE did have one series of reefers in meat service. There were also ART reefers in meat service, you'd have to check ORERs to tell the difference. The post above says, "Thus meat reefers required lots of salt. The only reefers that required more were the frozen food reefers, which also had heavier insulation. But most of these came into play in the 50's and I believe were of a steel design." Salt was also used on produce reefers for temperature control generally, not just for frozen food. The carts or wheelbarrows sometimes seen on ice dock decks were for salt, most often for produce reefers in ordinary produce service. John Allen would put white streaks around the ice hatches of his produce reefers to represent salt deposits -- I used to think he was incorrect (I'd been taking the "experts" seriously), but in fact he was just following the real world, which as a trained artist is what you'd expect from him!

For some reason, the self-appointed "experts", always a not completely favorable feature of the hobby, seem to flock around the reefer field more than some others, and I've learned to double-check their assertions. Same goes for the blanket statement about fans above. I would ask, for instance, if the PFE or ART reefers in meat service had their fans removed or not, and the question would be whether the "experts" are willing to do this double-checking themselves. Over the years, I've found several errors in Tony Thompson's blanket assertions -- he's said in clinics, for instance, that the Cotton Belt didn't run PFE reefer blocks (I have videos that say otherwise), or that the PFE routed its East Coast traffic principally over the Erie (to which I can only respond !?!?!?!). The best sources are rosters, the ORER, photos, videos, and first-hand accounts. Self-appointed "experts" not so much.

EDIT: while we're at it, another assertion by "experts" is that the Santa Fe didn't run PFE reefers in its trains, and the SP-UP didn't run Santa Fe reefers in their trains. All I can say is that the "experts" apparently haven't seen DVDs of archival footage from WWII to the end of ice reefer service!