I am building an icing building and platform from FSM for my layout. It is a copy of John Allen's. It has coloring instruction but want to know what color they really were. I was thinking a beige as I think white would be too stark but want to know reality and what others have done.
I would suspect the color would be railroad specific. A light grey would contrast with almost any other base color...
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
I'm thinking a Depot Buff.
Lynn
Present Layout progress
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/p/290127/3372174.aspx#3372174
White is a good color from an engineering standpoint, because it will reflect most of the sunlight away and help keep the inside of the building cool, particularly in summer.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Pictures of old SOO ice houses show them to be box car red or maroon. I remember the Swift & Co ice house in South St Paul, MN to have what appeared to be some kind of silver paint on it. It was torn down 2-3 years after the plant closed, and still had ice in it! The walls were about 2 ft thick with sawdust insulation.
Thats the kinda stuff that I needed, give me more.
rrebellThats the kinda stuff that I needed, give me more.
An interesting view of a huge icing and "precooling" operation on the Santa Fe.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/14338?size=_original#caption
Although specific to Lake Maxinkuckee in Indiana, there is lots of neat information here.
http://www.maxinkuckee.history.pasttracker.com/ice_houses/ice_houses_part_1.htm
Best Of Luck, Ed
The ice house in San Bernardino was painted white. It probably didn't stay white very long being around all of the dust and dirt from the desert plus the soot from the trains. You might want to paint it an off white color.
Ice houses tended to be kept painted well, because of the need for reflectivity to keep things cool and limit ice loss.
icing platforms were a mixed bag. They were a PITA to paint compared to something that simply had four walls. In at least some cases, they were built with treated lumber, which tends to lose paint faster than regular wood, so that may affect the longevity of a finish or even cause paint to be skipped entirely, with the platforms being different shades of weathered gray.
Before WWII, labor was cheap, which tended to encourage more painting. But there was also the Great Depression, which meant many roads wouldn't have bothered with a repaint of something that had a relatively low priority like an icing platform.
Also consider that the most visible part of the platform, the top where the ice slid around on and which the workers walked on, would have quickly lost any paint from scuffing and wear and reverted to the shades of gray that represent worn wood.
In the absnece of better info on a specific platform, I'd assume that weathered gray would be the most representative color.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Union Ice House San Bernardino California still serving non-rail customers like grocery and liquor stores in the 1980s-90s.
Ice machine in building on left, ice storage in building on right. Outside tempature is over 100 degrees on any summer day. Recently torn down for freeway improvements.
I worked one summer at an ice house way back in 1970. It was Murray City Coal and Ice on W 5th Avenue in Columbus, Ohio. It might have actually been within the boundaries of Grandview. Not sure where the line was.
I don't know how much coal they still sold back then because I only worked there in the summer. We sold block ice, crushed ice, ice cubes, pebble ice and snow. The bulk of our business was to restaurants and the Budweiser brewery but we still did some retail business. We had a spur off the rail line primarily to receive coal but we did some cold storage and I remember helping unload a reefer of frozen meat. By this time reefers were all mechanical. I don't know if they ever had an icing platform for servicing ice cooled reefers. If they did it had been torn down by 1970.
The building itself as best I can remember was a pale green. The deck of the loading dock was unpainted. We would often load trucks with block ice that we would slide into place. I'm just guessing but I would think a painted deck would result in paint chips in the ice blocks.
Paint chips in reefers I am sure were not an issue, I am sure the decks were unpainted though.