Need to know what widths and lengths and the makup of these boards. I have seen pics of single boards and multiple smaller boards linked together and also seen one that had sides. Nothing close enough in the pics though to scale out the dimentions.
I just looked at some on-line pictures. For loading by hand, it looks like the most common was pieces of plywood cut to whatever size made sense. Some of the boards had hand-slots cut in them for easier carrying, so I think they expected they'd last awhile. They look to be in the range of 15" to 24" wide. Length was long enough to do the job.
The ones with sides look like they're usually attached to an icing machine.
Ed
How far is it from the edge of your drop-down icing bay to the edge of the farthest ice hatch? That looks like it would be the length.
The boards look like they're about 1½" wider than the roof-walk planks. The ones below are narrower yet.
Seems to me that the planks have an angle iron lip that engages the edge of the platform to hold it in place while the blocks are shoved across it.
Hope that helps,
7j43kThe ones with sides look like they're usually attached to an icing machine.
I agree. It looks to me like those are also used for chipped ice for "top icing" certain loads, like produce, if I'm not mistaken. I see a few photos where they are applying ice through the loading door of the reefer.
Some large facilities looked like they were rather elaborately mechanized using chutes to direct crushed ice into the hatches.
Those are picks I haven't seen before, the second one is the type that swings out, all the pics so far are of icing platforms with the drop down door, any picks without?
rrebellany picks without?
Take a look here...
https://www.google.com/search?q=railroad+icing+platform&biw=1344&bih=766&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwinyJHP4MXRAhWN3oMKHWMVCRYQsAQIGQ
Ice houses and platforms were pretty numerous "back in the day" so there certainly was quite a bit of variety in their construction.
This one looks like a straight deck, although built higher and maybe closer to the car's edge, without the drop-down platforms.
There's a good view of one of the "cat-walks" laying upside-down, too.
I was hoping to have room for an icing platform on my layout but space became too scarce. I remember seeing a "City Ice" truck with a scissors lift drive up to stopped trains here in the Cleveland area in the 1960s. There must have been a few ice reefers still in operation.
Don't forget to have a salt box nearby. After the ice was loaded a couple pounds of salt was dumped in, too.
Perhaps this site will be of help. There are links to other icing operations:
http://modelingthesp.com/Pacific_Fruit_Express/PFE_Ice_Manufacturing.html
Regards, Ed
Thanks, guess when I looked I just couldn't get through all the garbage on the internet, guess that is why I bookmark any that are of use, thanks again.
Now a new question comes up, in one of the pics it shows an outside braced, small reefer used for strawberry trafic called an R-7 from Pennsylvania, looked for it but found nothing except for the original pic taken at Salsbury.