FS: HO Scale Precooler
#1
This precooler model was scratch-built by Dave Dunaway of Las Vegas, NV. Dave is a past recipient of an NMRA Achievement Program’s Golden Spike Award. Here is a link to photos of Dave’s layout. The precooler is Photo #3:

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The precooler model in total is 81 inches long and 31 inches wide at the precooler machinery room section. The four-track shed section is 71 inches long and 14 inches wide, or a scale 515 feet by 102 feet. There is capacity for forty-eight HO scale refrigerator cars.

While the precooler model has signage that indicates is a Santa Fe precooler, it does not resemble the railroad’s San Bernardino precooler.

I was planning to install this model on a future second level of my layout. However, the most recent plan for the second level will not allow use of the precooler.

This model is for sale for $75.00 cash (firm), F.O.B. Hemet, CA.

Please contacted me at:

<!-- e --><a href="mailto:chiefbobbb@verizon.net">chiefbobbb@verizon.net</a><!-- e -->


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#2
That's certainly a seldom-modelled industry. Here's an interior shot of a real one:
SHORPY

Wayne
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#3
What is a pre-cooler? I guess it cools the orange fruits down before they are loaded into refers (rail or street cars)? But I do also not understand how that all side open structure works. Is the entire inside the cooling room?
Reinhard
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#4
The pre-cooler blows cold air into the reefers, probably before they're iced and before they're loaded. Empty reefers, sitting in the sun, pick up a lot of heat, and the freshly-picked produce contains a lot of "field heat", too. The procedure might eliminate or at least delay a stop for re-icing during transit.
There's some additional info HERE

Wayne
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#5
Here is a link to Bill Messecar’s scratch-built San Bernardino Precooler in HO scale:
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Bill lives in Kent, WA, and models parts of the Santa Fe’s Los Angeles Division Third District and the related citrus industry infrastructure. He has a number of scratch-built and kit-bashed packing houses on his layout that accurately represent prototypes along the Santa Fe.

Bob Chaparro
Hemet, CA
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#6
A little more on precooling. I've found some evidence that empty refrigerator cars were precooled but this was very rare. I can state this with great certainty as there was no tariff for precooling an empty car. This article sheds some more light on the subject.
Bob Chaparro
Citrus Industry Modeling Group
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/citrusmodeling/info">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/citrusmodeling/info</a><!-- m -->
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Precooling Vs. Cold Storage

The following article appeared in CALIFORNIA FRUIT NEWS, Volume 42, October 29, 1910. The concept of precooling fruit was not widely known or understood in those days so this article, written by a representative of the Vilter Manufacturing Company (a manufacturer of precooling equipment), was intended to spread the word. Vilter now is part of Emerson Climate Technologies.

The Santa Fe’s San Bernardino precooler plant is mentioned at the end of the article.
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PRE-COOLING IS NOT COLD STORAGE

By C. M. Gay, Pacific Coast Representative The Vilter Manufacturing Company, Milwaukee, Wis.

There is a tendency on the part of the public and growers of citrus fruits to confuse pre-cooling with cold storage. To properly understand the difference between the two it is necessary to realize that pre-cooling is essentially a short time process and related directly to the problem of transportation.

Cold storage in its various phases is as old as refrigerating itself, and there are no material elements of novelty in placing fruit, boxed or otherwise, in a cold storage room until it is chilled down.

The period through which it may be held under such conditions is indefinite, and this system is cold storage pure and simple, and has long ago found its limitations in preparing fruit for market. Instead of being used for cooling fruit for immediate transportation, it is more frequently utilized for holding the fruit for a better market, and such holding being of Indeterminate length, frequently exhausts the keeping qualities of the fruit before shipment is made.

On the other hand, pre-cooling as now being applied by the transcontinental railroad companies, relates to immediate reduction of temperature within the refrigerator car itself immediately preceding a quick transportation to its eastern destination. The method employed is that of cold air circulation, and while the method of applying this circulation differs widely in different appliances, means of conserving loss, etc., the principle is the same. Under ordinary methods of cold storage from 48 to 60 hours usually elapse before the fruit is brought down to the desired holding or carrying temperature, while under pre-cooling methods the same temperature is arrived at in from three to five hours.

It does not take any great amount of experience or knowledge of fruit to readily perceive the fact that the sooner after picking and packing the fruit can be brought to a carrying temperature the lower will be the percentage of loss from decay and deterioration during transportation.

Many arguments have been advanced from time to time in favor of cold storage at point of original shipment, but practical experience has demonstrated that the quick lowering of temperature to stop the development of spores and decay, as is the case in pre-cooling, is far more effective. The practice of cold storing in a room at point of origination is very apt to be taken advantage of by the shipper to hold his fruit for a considerable length of time; in fact, until such time that the natural keeping qualities have been exhausted, and such fruit after a long journey reaches the market with little elasticity or life left in it, and while in many cases condition on arrival is apparently good, it sinks rapidly thereafter owing to the fact that it has been held too long.

On the other hand, the purchaser of fruit that has been pre-cooled directly after It has been picked and packed knows that he is getting fresh fruit held under the most favorable conditions and transported at once to market, and that the life of the fruit is certain to be greater and its holding qualities better than the ordinary shipments, and he is in less danger of loss during the period of distribution to final consumption.

The plant of the Santa Fe Railroad Company at San Bernardino, for instance, is an example of the highest development of the new art of precooling. San Bernardino is the concentrating point of citrus shipments from the whole San Bernardino valley. Pickup trains are operated, taking the refrigerator cars to the central station as fast as loaded, and at this central station a delay of four hours reduces the fruit to a temperature of from 40 to 48 degrees, when the car bunkers are filled with ice and the fruit proceeds on its way to eastern destination under the most favorable conditions imaginable. Considerable saving on ice en route is accomplished by the process of pre-cooling, but this is a small consideration as compared with the better condition of the fruit and its better keeping qualities on arrival.

The plant referred to has a capacity of 32 loaded cars every four hours. These are switched in to the pre-cooler and icing dock, the cold air connections being made to the bunker openings and a volume of 6,000 to 8,000 cubic feet of air per minute is forced through the car with a violence which rapidly extracts the heat even from the center of the packages, and when the carrying temperature has been reached the bunkers are filled with ice and the fruit is on its way to market.
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#7
Thanks for that additional info on pre-cooling. While there was once a thriving fruit industry in southern Ontario's Niagara Peninsula, much of the harvest not consumed locally was shipped in ventilated cars (often modified baggage cars) to nearby markets (less than two hours away) so pre-cooling wasn't practical. For more distant markets, pre-iced reefers would likely have been used.

Wayne
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#8
SOLD. THIS ITEM IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.
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