Murphy SidingRe; Trivia question: All I can come up with, is maybe the salted beef industry?
Much of the spice was used to cover the taste of rancid butter, etc. Once those products could be carried over significant distances cold, the need to cover said taste disappeared.
At least that's what I read/heard. I'll gladly stand corrected.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
tree68 The New York Central had icing operations, probably for much the same reason L&NE did. Much of their ice was cut from Racquette Lake and the Fulton Chain, in the south central Adirondacks, and hauled to the Central's various ice houses. I don't have the numbers readily available, but IIRC, the amount of ice hauled out of those locations ran in the 50,000 ton range each year. Trivia question: What well known shipped commodity was was rendered completely unnecessary by the refrigerated railroad car? A complete industry was effectively wiped out.
The New York Central had icing operations, probably for much the same reason L&NE did. Much of their ice was cut from Racquette Lake and the Fulton Chain, in the south central Adirondacks, and hauled to the Central's various ice houses. I don't have the numbers readily available, but IIRC, the amount of ice hauled out of those locations ran in the 50,000 ton range each year.
Trivia question: What well known shipped commodity was was rendered completely unnecessary by the refrigerated railroad car? A complete industry was effectively wiped out.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
This Internet site - http://www.kinglyheirs.com/CNE/MaybrookYard.html - has a condensed history of Maybrook Yard, which served something like a half-dozen railroads. It has several photos of its ice house and icing platform at about 1/3 and 1/2 the way down, plus of refrigerator cars of Wilson & Co. Car Lines - 'WLCX', Swift Refrigerator Line - 'SRLX', and Cudahy Car Lines - 'CRLX', at about 2/3 of the way down, under the heading ''Special Section Maybrook Yard in the Sixties''.
- Paul North.
samfp1943Bananas
Russell
Growing up in Memphis, Tn. there for years was an entity called "Raiway Ice Co." It sold bag ice in the community out of coolers placed at businesses. The Ice was manufactured at several facilities around town. Old structures that generally were adjacent to different railroads.
It was the facility at the Frisco's Yale Yard, I was most familiar with as it. It was serviced by several tracks that spured off the Yard and serviced a couple of finger-like structures , high enough to ice the reefer car bunker hatches. The ice was carried down the loading fingers in a metal trough where gangs of men would use hooks,tongs, and pike-like poles to driect the slabs across into the waiting bunkers. THis facility lasted up into the 1960 before it was torn out.
I nave seen photos of the Railway's Ice Co dock at the Illinois Central's Yard at Fulron (Tn.)/ South Fulton,(KY). I was large enough to be able to have 20/30 cars at a time to be iced off their dock. It was there to service the Banana Trains on the IC. It was the IC's hauling of Bananas into the upper midwest on their express routing that brought familiarization to that population of the tropical banana.
EDIT: This is a link to some history of Railroad Reefers, showing some older cars and how the icing process might have taken place: http://www.pustakalaya.org/wiki/wp/r/Refrigerator_car.htm
Once the loaded and iced reefer was turned over to the railroad to haul, I believe that usually the railroad that had custody of the car was responsible for replenishing the ice, typically at major yards and terminals. If you think about all the possible variations in routing, there's no way that each reefer company would need or could afford to have an icing platform in each major town, given the random nature of the traffic.
In particular, I'm thinking of the Lehigh & New England, a coal-hauling road mainly in eastern Pennsylvania that was abandoned in 1961. It would have had no or only minimal need for ice for its own traffic, other than maybe on-line fluid milk shipments and the like. But in its principal yard at Pen Argyl, the L&NE nevertheless had an icing platform, the remains of which were still there in the regrowth forest a few years ago. The ice was harvested during the winter and spring from nearby lakes in the southern Pocono mountains, such as at Saylorsburg and Tobyhanna, and stored as selector says.
Today, Amtrak receives bags of ice cubes aboard its diners and lounge cars, but I have videos from the "good old days" showing block ice being loaded aboard lounges and diners and the car staff would have to chip it with picks and break it up into useable pieces. This was another job that the poor crews had to do in their daily routines that wasn't seen by too many people.
I recall icing racks, as it were, when I was a wee lad in a desert "salad bowl" in southeastern California. There was a very large Union Ice plant adjacent to the icing racks, which could probably accommodate 10-12 reefers at a time to the east of the SP yard in town. The plant fed the ice demand of produce transit, plus also supplied ice to business and homes in town, though mostly businesses, I would suspect. One of the ice men lived across the street from my grandmother and would come home in his truck for lunch.
I am guessing that as the sixties rolled around, the need to ice reefers diminished or disappeared, as it seemed to be a rare occurrence to have cars spotted at the racks.
Yes, it was a demanding type of work, and it was pretty cold for those out on the lakes where ice was harvested. Those spring gales out on the ice were not particularly pleasant, but somebody had to harvest the ice. Exactly how it was done, and how it was ferried to lifters that placed the large slabs onto wooden or metal slipways that ran across rows of reefer roofs, I don't know. But I have seen video of these large slabs sliding along at a good rate of knots, being hooked by someone to steer it to an open hatch, and then it must have been up to somebody to force it into some semblance of order so that the compartment could be adequately filled. When no cars were available for filling, it was stored in buildings or dugouts lined with sawdust to insulate it.
The slab in my Toyota has endured for three summers now. Amazing what they can do nowadays. Or maybe it just refreezes during our coldest days on the Island.
-Crandell
PFE owned numerous icing platforms and ice making plants (they are older than you probably think, the first commercial refrigeration system was made back in the 1870s, http://www.ashrae.org/publications/detail/15449, http://www.asme.org/Communities/History/Resources/Climate_Control_Refrigeration.cfm). Ice was also brought from colder areas to other areas in reefers. Some shippers also had icing platforms, but if I remember correctly, it was normally the refrigerator lines (PFE, etc) that operated this stuff. In some places they would contract with ice companies.
The Signature Press book on PFE would be very interesting if you are interested in this stuff.
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
Before electricity in small towns became prevalent in the Twenties, you would have needed a commercial ice house. Who delivered the stuff and who chipped it I don't know, but it was probably hauled up by the kind of traction assembly farmers still use for grain, and dumped down into the reefer through the wooden slats.
As to desert areas, there were failures. You may remember from the book or movie East of Eden that a freak snowstorm blocked the track up in the mountains, causing the Trask family's trainload of iceberg lettuce to spoil in the desert.
I was reading something that touched on old-time reefers- the kind that required ice to be put in them. When you consider how labor intensive use of coal was for the railroads, it seems icing reefer would be close behind. Who was responsible for the icing operation? The railroad, or the car owners, or a third party? Where did the ice come from, before commercial ice-making machines were invented? Was the lading frozen, or just cooled? How in the world, did California produce get accross the desert areas?
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