In Andy Sperandeo's Feight Yard book (I believe) he indicated that reefer blocks were usually placed in the front of the train behind the locos to make cuts taken to the icing docks or block swaps easy.
Was this an almost universal placement on most roads? Were reefer blocks ever placed at the rear end of a train just before the caboose? I'm setting up operation for my layout so it's time to decide how to handle these block swaps on opposing through freight meets.
How this all works using the yard drill (lead) details would be helpful too...
Thanks! Jim
Raised on the Erie Lackawanna Mainline- Supt. of the Black River Transfer & Terminal R.R.
Capt. GrimekWas this an almost universal placement on most roads? Were reefer blocks ever placed at the rear end of a train just before the caboose? I'm setting up operation for my layout so it's time to decide how to handle these block swaps on opposing through freight meets.
I am confused by the last sentence. Why would opposing trains swap blocks? I am familiar with block swaps, I hired on with the Mopac and they did them all the time. We had one complex enough it was called the "Bald Knob Shuffle", but they were generally on trains going in the same direction.
Blocks can go anyplace in the train that the railroad wants to put them. The only reason they were on the head end of the ATSF was because they were iced. If the blocks don't need to be iced, then they don't need to be on the head end. They only need to be iced every couple days. Every train on every subdivisin isn't going to ice reefers. Theey are only going to do it at a few selected locations. I model the Reading and there wasn't a single place on the entire railroad that a through freight set out blocks to be iced or reefers were iced enroute.
I'm not sure what you mean by how it works with a yard drill. A train sets out a block and then another train comes along later, maybe 12-16 hours later and picks up the block. Or one train sets out one block and picks up another block. For example on the Bald Knob Shuffle, it took about 6-12 hours for it to finish and invloved about four trains over that time period, no two trains being there at any one time.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Let's not make a general rule of thumb into an absolute. It all really depends on what train, doing what work, headed which way.
West of Chicago, the preponderant theme was moving iced reefers eastbound. Such traffic tended to be blocked to facilitate icing over the several days of eastbound movement. It's also important to keep in mind that loads headed east often were still being marketed, so the need for icing depended on routing to the final destination. Icing facilities tended to favor the direction of the bulk of the traffic, which was eastbound. Returning MT reefers might be blocked, but where they went in the train was of less consequence.
In the East, the pattern of reefer traffic tended to be more balanced, so facilities tended to be more bi-directional.
Note that in both directions, I used the word "tended" since there were always exceptions.
At both ends of the journey, blocked reefers tended to be located wherever locals handling them needed to be to facilitate switching them onward to their destination, so again not an absolute. Then throw in how our layouts may be set up. Ideally, this reflects prototype practice at whatever location is depicted, but the well-known limitations of space, funds, and time may not make that work as well as it might. But as we know, this isn't always possible or anticipated. So you go with what works best for your situation.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
As said, there is no hard and fast rule of placement. I watched a lot of IC freights going thru Anna Illinois and the reefers were typically in blocks, but could be pretty much anywhere. While there may have been placement consideration in the building of the train, perhaps that placement would have been best "anywhere" depending on circumstances.
Of course there were a number of "reefer only" trains, with the Santa Fe being one of the big players - moving fruits/vegetables from California east. And the IC had the bannana trains coming from New Orleans to Chicago. And then of course the meat trains going from the midwest to all points.
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
Since cars are blocked in trains according to distention there is no hard fast rule. Even a solid reefer train was blocked according to distention..
As a example of a train build from (say) Logansport you would have a Columbus block,Pittsburgh block Philadelphia block,Trenton block and New York block in that order in the train's consist. Any reefers bound for Trenton would be found in the Trenton block.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Thank you guys. I appreciate especially hearing from prototype railroad workers. Does anyone know if Santa Fe in particular DID indeed prefer to place reefers for re-icing on the front end? Was this just a generalization in the "Freight Yards" Kalmbach book? To be fair, I'll have to borrow back my copy, loaned to a friend to be certain that's where I originally read this.
Dave H. my question regarding the drill track was in relation to the layout ops. If the block to be swapped/set out in the yard was mid train for instance, the use of the drill/lead could be needed to have enough room to do that job depending on one's yard size, track lengths, etc.
The ops scenario I had in mind for the swaps does include a span of time between opposing freights but due to late trains might require a swap "now" if the reefers have already been iced and are waiting for that opposing train either at the ice dock or on the departure track. Is that a reasonable assumption that that could happen from time to time? It sounds like a "best practice" Ops scenario would be to generally wait until cycle 2 of a car card system before picking up those reefers? WERE meets EVER involved with "imediate" swaps?
Thanks again, Jim
Jim
From what I’ve learned from videos about Southern Pacific’s Pacific Fruit Express is that the refrigerated cars were the highest priority cars to the railroad due to spoilage and the desire to keep the produce as fresh as possible so they were at the front of the train, sometimes making up the whole, while other times other freight cars going the same direction would fill out the train. In other words produce came first and the rest of the train was just extra cars tacked onto the end of the refrigerated cars.
Operation wise, if the cars are at the front of the train it makes it easier for the crew to cut off the rear cars and take only the cars needing ice to the ice house.
Lone Wolf and Santa FeOperation wise, if the cars are at the front of the train it makes it easier for the crew to cut off the rear cars and take only the cars needing ice to the ice house.
PRR reclassified trains in Columbus,so the train from Logansport would be reclassified and the reefers iced. This took roughly 24 hours including terminal dwell time.Plenty of time to ice and place the reefers in their proper block.
OTOH solid reefer trains would be iced,the Columbus cars removed and be sped on its way in about 5 hours. In the steam era these reefer trains was handled by J1s or M1s by the mid 50s F3 A-B-B-A would do the honors the brand new GP9s replaced the F3s and in the early 60s GP30s or U25Bs replaced the GP9s. As late as '65 there was still ice bunkers that needed to be iced in these trains even though the majority of the reefers was mechanical.These was usually placed by the cabin so,the yard crew could pull them for icing.
From the sound of it, then, I'd be "wise" to not stick to one operating scenario only... I guess, I'll do this run with cars at the rear end in front of the caboose and then again with the reefers at the front end.
This would not ony give me more car card cycles to run but also account for any operator (or prototype crew) errors when picking up or setting out cars prior to arrival at the classification/icing dock yard. Be ready for anything and provide operational variety?
Think this is a valid approach for layout ops AND staying true to prototype practices?
My layout is a Division Point/ has only one destination - a city terminus at the upper level and a staging yard at the other end (point to point with an oval continuous run (below the main layout). So...blocking for multi-destinations isn't (maybe) as critical as for mainline runs with several towns?
I'll try to make this my last question(s) regarding this. Thanks again everyone for your help. We're having fun getting Ops going but wanted to clarify all of this.
Capt. GrimekThis would not ony give me more car card cycles to run but also account for any operator (or prototype crew) errors when picking up or setting out cars prior to arrival at the classification/icing dock yard. Be ready for anything and provide operational variety?
Yes,you could do that for variety and sounds like a fun idea.
Another idea that you may want to try..Since ice houses was located in or near the yard you could have your yard crew to remove the reefers and take them to the icing track. This would give your yard operator a priory job to do and still be in line for prototyical operation..
Why would the yard crew do that instead of the road crew?
On most railroads road crews was limited to three pickups/setouts due to company/union work agreements concerning the duties of a road crew. This agreement did not apply for locals and interdivision transfer trains.
You may want to try a interdivision transfer train if you have industrial areas with a storage track-your transfer crew could leave cars there for the local to spot.