I've been perusing eBay looking at early rolling stock and I find a lot of billboard refers. But I'm leery. I see Swift Meats from Chicago and I immediately have two questions.
As you know, I am modeling California north of the Bay Area. (Think Willits)
1) There are many cattle ranches in the area, and they ship to meat packing houses. Where would these meat packing facilities be located. THey can't be going back to Chicago can they? Would say San Francisco and Los Angeles be receiving meat from Chicago?
2) The billboard refers I've seen from Swift seem too modern for the 1890's. I'm not talking about the cars themselves but the art. Pictures I've seen of early Swift Meats 1870's and 1880's are nowhere near as fancy. How would I know what art would be era specific?
I admit my ignorance knows no bounds on this subject.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
Chip, Yes, meats from Chicago would be found in California because of the brand names. Cattle could and would be shipped East to Chicago for processing.
In the 50s PRR ran a cattle train to the East coast and all of those stock cars had Western road names. I'm not sure of what type of beef cattle road in those cars but, I can still recall the smell and the mooing of the cattle..
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
SpaceMouse1) There are many cattle ranches in the area, and they ship to meat packing houses. Where would these meat packing facilities be located. THey can't be going back to Chicago can they? Would say San Francisco and Los Angeles be receiving meat from Chicago?
Cudahy had a packing house outside San Diego. and one in Omaha, NE. SWift was based out of Greeley, CO and had plants in Omaha and Chicago. There were also packing plants in Ft Worth, TX.
Regardless of where the plants were, if you are modeling Califonria, its safe to say there were packing plants well east of where you are. It would be entirely possible that cattle were shipped east and meat shipped west. Besides Swift, Armour and Cudahy had a network of packing plants and distribution points.
Reefers of meat would be sent to a brand distributor (Swift to Swift, Armour to Armour, Cudahy to Cudahy), where the meat would be cut and sold wholesale to meat markets, grocery stores and restaurants, who would then prepare it or sell it retail. In addition there was a network of sales for canned meat.
The brands wouldn't cross if going to a brand distributor (a Swift distributor wouldn't recieve an Armour reefer and vice versa).
There wouldn't be many 1870's Swift reefers since the business wasn't incorporated until 1875. Early swift reefers generally were white with red and black lettering. They later (early 1900's?) changed to yellow, then changed to red and finally to white/silver in the 1960's.
Clover House has 4 1890's appropriate Swift Reefer dry transfers, 9300-01, -03, -4, -05, plus dozens of other era appropriate reefer dry transfers.
Hints for era appropriate lettering:
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
SpaceMouseThe billboard refers I've seen from Swift seem too modern for the 1890's.
It is going to be very difficult finding any freight cars suitable for the 1890s. Westerfield makes a handful, Roundhouse made a few kits that could be suitable, and there are some train-set style "old-timers" floating around, but not much else.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I sometimes browse the huge repository of AC&F photos at the John Barriger album at Flickr.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/albums/72157649155982802
ACF Lot 649 by John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library, on Flickr
The photos aren't well sorted so a search is difficult but decent resolution copies can easily be downloaded for future reference. I use a photo enhancing software to clean them up a bit.
9375 002 by John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library, on Flickr
Many of the photos are from the teens and twenties so are a little more recent, unfortunately.
Swift_meat by Edmund, on Flickr
There are some early "Car Builders Cyclopedias" on line if you Google them. There may be a few photos there?
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021736932&view=1up&seq=7
Good Luck, Ed
Thanks everyone.
SeeYou190 It is going to be very difficult finding any freight cars suitable for the 1890s. Westerfield makes a handful, Roundhouse made a few kits that could be suitable, and there are some train-set style "old-timers" floating around, but not much else. -Kevin
LaBelle made a few reefer kits also. I have one that's a Colorado Midland Hanrahan reefer made by LaBelle. Hanrahans are suitable for the 1890s, as the CM's cars were built in the 1880s and 1890s. Here's a link to a builder's photo of an AT&SF example. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Reefers-shorty-ATSF-CM-type-1898-cyc_ACF_builders_photo.jpg