Tropicana Juice reefers

[Canadian Atlantic Railway]

I'm hoping someone on the Big Blue can help me out with the Tropicana Juice reefers. I know CSX runs a dedicated juice train from Flordia to New Jersey but do the reefers fan out to other destinations in single cars or blocks?

[lajry]

Not a unit train of Tropicana reefers but 10 +/- per week (?) come to their plant in City of Industry CA in UP (nee SP)trains.

[Canadian Atlantic Railway]

Thanks Andy!

[Green_Elite_Cab]

The "Big" Tropicana train does not. These trains go straight to their plant in Kearny, NJ. (In fact, I just passed by it a week ago!). To quote the May 1995 RMC Article on the subject...


"While the US Department of Agriculture reveals that the average American drinks approximately 5 gallons of Orange Juice a year, the typical Northeasterner actually consumes about 12 gallons in that same time period. Now thats a lot of Juice, so much in fact that it takes Five ships holding an average of 2.1 million gallons of concentrate (and with the usual round trip time of a month to a month in a half) and three weekly juice trains from Florida to take care of the orange juice thirst in the northeastern corner of the US"


As you can see, Orange juice is a serious commodity on the Northeast.

That said...


Tropicana does have a few leased double-plug door insulated boxcars that also depart from Florida in other trains, that DO ship orange juice in smaller shipments. These cars are big dark green cars with USLX reporting marks.

These still have some of the Tropicana markings on them, but they don't look quite as fancy as the unit-train cars do. Details West offered this as a kit a while ago (Part # 504), but my understanding is that these were difficult to come by.

Infact, you have a chance on Ebay right now- <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/DETAILS-WEST-BC-504-50-DOUBLE-PLUG-DOOR-BOXCAR-TROPICANA-13079-/400827014345?pt=Model_RR_Trains&hash=item5d5326dcc9">http://www.ebay.com/itm/DETAILS-WEST-BC ... 5d5326dcc9</a><!-- m -->

[Green_Elite_Cab]

Additionally, there is a Herald King decal set for these green cars used in the "small" shipments-

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/Miller-Herald-King-decals-HO-PR-57-Tropicana-blue-52-box-car-K139-/361152172019?pt=Model_RR_Trains&hash=item541658cff3">http://www.ebay.com/itm/Miller-Herald-K ... 541658cff3</a><!-- m -->

[Canadian Atlantic Railway]

Thanks for the additional info GEC. I saw that Walthers had the new reefers on sale and hate to pass up a sale lol. I couldn't find any modern pics of the green cars so I'll pass on that one.

[railohio]

There is the famous unit train to New Jersey, and also smaller cuts that move in intermodal trains to Southern California and Cincinnati, Ohio.

[Canadian Atlantic Railway]

I've been scouring photos all afternoon and it seems none of them made it to eastern Canada so I'll skip them and wait for another run of the CEFX cars.

[Russ Bellinis]

I don't know if Tropicana still uses any green cars. The white fleet uses the same sort of Carrier-Transicold the Intermountain, Exactrail , Athearn Genesis,and BLMA use on their modern reefers. I used to go to the City of Industry warehouse to do warranty work on the Tropicana reefers.

Those new type units are microprocessor controlled, and each customer has a custom program on the microprocessor for their application. I took a class with Carrier on the various units and their programs used on railroad units both on the rail cars and on the intermodal trailer units of various companies. One of the things they told us in the class as they gave us background info on many of the companies. We were told that "Tropicana Pure" brand is 100% Florida orange juice like it says on the cartons and bottles.

Before I worked for Carrier, I worked in the Los Angeles Harbor until the company was bought out and everybody was laid off. We used to receive orange juice concentrate from Chile in 55 gallon plastic drums. All of that concentrate went to Cocoa Cola to be used mostly in their Minute Maid brand of orange juice. I'm not sure if some of it went into flavoring their orange soda.

[e-paw]

They also run complete trains of refers to the Tropicana plant on the border of Jersey City and Bayonne in Jersey.

[Mr Fixit]

By my calculations, based on GEC's data, a typical North-eastern US resident consumes on average half a cup of OJ per day. The typical US resident on the other hand only consumes about 1/5 of a cup of OJ per day.
Make what you will of the above given what we know about typical people and average Joe's.
There is no mention as to how much the average floor consumes when the container gets dropped by the clumsy adult or the self serve little kid struggling with a large container and a fridge door with a mind of its own.

Food for thought or should that be a cup of OJ to drink while you ponder these figures?

Mark

[Green_Elite_Cab]

I know that my own Orange Juice Intake reflects this "northeastern" trend. I'll get a whole gallon of Tropicana, and it will be gone in a day or two.

I'm pretty sure they should spot one of those Tropicana cars on my local Team Track, just to keep me supplied....


In any event, here I have about 5 Tropicana cars by red caboose. Just 7 more to go to get all road numbers of this run. I didn't realize they have moving roller caps, which is nice.

I read on another forum, that these often got tacked onto the back of south-bound Trailvan trains in short blocks, so this works out for my current intermodal train. Its to bad that our open houses are over! By next year, I anticipate having an impressive roster of both trains.