I have learned a lot about ice houses and reefers while building the cornerstone kit. A few questions remain however. For instance, how does the very large blocks of raw ice get into the ice house? Also the raw ice must come to the house in very large blocks to ease melting during transport to the ice house. How do the ice blocks get small enough to fit into the relatively small reefer ice hatches?
I was also surprised at the great size of the ice house itself. It is as large as a warehouse!!!
73
Bruce in the Peg
I cannot answer all your questions, Bruce, but I will provide a link to a very interesting Shorpy photo of an ice house operation at San Bernadino showing the interesting "precooling" of cars and the chain conveyor moving the blocks.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/14338?size=_original#caption
I have seen films of icing operations and they showed men using pick axes and poles to break the ice into chunks that will fit into the bunker hatch. Look at the groove molded into the ice block and it looks like the block can be split there (as the distant block is) and the halves look like they will fit the size of the hatch.
Looks like the car on the right was just iced.
Ed
There is useful information about ice houses on the internet. If you find yourself in Cedar Falls Iowa do NOT miss going to the ice house museum because it really sets forth everything you'd want to know about how that ice house (a rare round one of brick) or ice house operated. They show how the ice was transported from the river next door on sled like frames, a conveyor into the house itself, and the huge array of picks, big saws, and axes that were all used to size the ice for commercial/residental sale as well as railroad use. (I remember when the local depot in my home town kept ice in a small and leaking box outside - it was used for the caboose on the local for their small icebox for food).
The museum's website is worth exploring too.
http://www.cfhistory.org/page.aspx?n=39&p=Ice%20House-2
Dave Nelson
gmpullman I cannot answer all your questions, Bruce, but I will provide a link to a very interesting Shorpy photo of an ice house operation at San Bernadino showing the interesting "precooling" of cars and the chain conveyor moving the blocks. http://www.shorpy.com/node/14338?size=_original#caption I have seen films of icing operations and they showed men using pick axes and poles to break the ice into chunks that will fit into the bunker hatch. Look at the groove molded into the ice block and it looks like the block can be split there (as the distant block is) and the halves look like they will fit the size of the hatch. Looks like the car on the right was just iced. Ed
The ice in San Bernardino was made right there, not transported. The ice house remained open several years after it stopped serving the railroad. I think it finally closed in the 1990s and was only recently torn down for freeway construction.
If ice was transported andf not manfactured on site, it would be necessary to provide dedicated reefers for this purpose. There were two methods typically employed:
Larger capacity storage houses could have a dedicated ice unloading platform and possibly a dedicated unloading spur as well. These platforms were not constructed level, but sloped away from the unloading side of the reefer, this facaliated the movement of ice blocks to a chain that captured the blocks, once captured they would be routed to the storage house were a external or internal elevator(s) and manual labor was employed to distribute the ice within the structure. Smaller operations made do with a delivery door cut into the side of the storage house.
Protoypes did exist that set these platforms well away from the main structure, this was were the ice bridge came into play, the conveyor was elevated above all obstructions and interferring trackage, mechanical system of lifts and conveyors handled the lifting and routing duties, the advantage of this system was the ability to route block ice to the platform for immediate use or allocate to specific areas within the structure for future use. The most imposing example of a PFE ice bridge was located in Watsonville Ca, this engineering marvel could be retracted, extended and rotated to serve up to five icing sidings and was configued to deliver crushed ice used in the top icing of lettuce shipments.
The amount and size of ice was a customer choice, and was dictated by the product being shipped, transit time, replenishment requirements and expected weather conditions.
Dave