Hello,
which companies had meat reefers in the 1940's and 1950's especially in the eastern united states. Thanks for any advice.
Regards Matthew Redden
de N2MPU Jack
Proud NRA Life Member and supporter of the 2nd. Amendment
God, guns, and rock and roll!
Modeling the NYC/NYNH&H in HO and CPRail/D&H in N
jackn2mpu wrote:If you're talking about the reefers with advertising on the sides, those were outlawed for interchange service before that time. Elsewise, it'd be Morrell, Swift, rath, Gotham Stock Express, Oscar Mayer. Quite probably REA shipped meats in their express reefers.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
The "outlawed billboard reefers" story isn't quite what it sounds like. In 1937, the Interstate Commerce Commission banned certain uses of large-scale advertising on freight cars. At the time, the railroads or non-producer companies often owned the cars. The law, as I understand it, applied to non-company-owned cars only. So, if the Santa Fe owned a car, it couldn't say "Budweiser" on it in big, colorful letters. For some reason, our wise government officials thought there was something wrong with reefers that said "Budweiser" on them, particularly if they were carrying Schlitz. The beer companies, at the same time, were beginning to realize that rail cars which prominently advertised their product were magnets for the beer-stealing crowd, so they weren't too upset about having to "go stealthy" in their beer deliveries.
I don't think this restriction applies to cars owned by the producing companies, so a packing company like Armour or Hormel could still be painted up with their logos.
This Wikipedia article on reefers is pretty good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_car
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Undoubtly the "banning" of billboard reefers is the most misquoted "fact" in model railroading, incorrect information regarding which is consistantly posted.
While an ICC ruling in 1934 indirectly governed the appearance in the future of non-privately owned cars and the '37 ruling governed their further interchange, the decline in so-called "bill board" cars was largely brought about by decidedly other considerations.
First of all, the ICC ruling did not pertain to company logos, or advertising, on privately owned reefers, which amounted to a very significant percentage of those on the rails. They were largely free to do as they pleased and continued to sport dramatically presented company names for decades to come...some even down to today
Secondly, since it was ruled that a shipper had the right to demand - at no cost to them (but at significant time and expense to the RR) - a replacement car if the RR delievered one with a competitor's message on its sides, it became a financial loss for the RR to continue to have and track such cars for use.
Further, the beer companies, among the best known for their lavishly illustrated privately owned bill board cars, quickly discovered that their advertising was a glaring announcement that the car contained beer and theft of the product was a severe problem in rail yards as a result - as well as a decided additional burden on yard security.
CNJ831
A good example of why the rulling was put into effect was that the C&NW was using their NWX reefer fleet as advertising billboards. Everything from butter to eggs to meat were advertised on their cars. Complaints from other shippers came when one of these cars was spotted at XZY company for loading, and had advertising for ABC company on it. The other issue was what it was carrying had nothing to do with what was advetised on the car.
If a company owned car(Rath for example) had advertsing on it, that was fine(as long as it was not carrying something other than the products advertised on the car). Back in the late 50's/60's, Johnson Wax had some colorful cars with JWAX reporting marks!
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
Ice Bunker reefers are a great thing to model. I've just completed the Walthers ice house and icing platform kit. In the days before mechanically-cooled reefers, the cars had to be re-iced every few hundred miles. These icing stations provide an "industry" for your layout, which can be used either for through traffic or to ice the car before spotting it at your packing plant or brewery for loading.
MisterBeasley wrote: Ice Bunker reefers are a great thing to model. I've just completed the Walthers ice house and icing platform kit. In the days before mechanically-cooled reefers, the cars had to be re-iced every few hundred miles. These icing stations provide an "industry" for your layout, which can be used either for through traffic or to ice the car before spotting it at your packing plant or brewery for loading.
True indeed, but I wonder just how many pre-1950's modelers actually depict the source of their ice? I'd say that relatively few modelers today are even aware of the fact that the ice source was often separate from the icing platform's location. Therefore, it is a missed opportunity for another interesting, ice-associated, rail-served industry on the layout.
Way back in the days when ice bunker reefers were king, it wasn't all that often that one saw an "ice pond" situated iimmediately adjacent to the icing station in a rail yard. More often than not, ice was brought to the icing platform complex (and stored in that location's ice house) by rail from various true ice houses that were often situated at a distance.
Many railroads had a number of "ice service reefers" (usually slightly modified older regular reefers) in dedicated service just for the movement of ice from the source to the icing platform complexes. This is a situation, while once common in the real world, that is, unfortunately, rarely depicted in the modeled one. And even if you don't wish to actually show the remote ice house on the layout, you can still have the fun of simulating the necessary traffic by running ice service reefers from staging to the icing platform and back off-line again. Of course, there were also other industries beyond icing platforms that required bulk ice deliveries from time to time.
Another thing to consider is that Railroads weren't the only ones that need ice. Ice Houses that supplied the public for their home "ice boxes" and other uses, were also an important industry before the invention and wide spread use of electric refridgerators. I have found several lumber yards that had ice houses. Probably because the people that had lumber land also had ice ponds.
Back to the original question: Swift, Wilson and Armour are 3 that were in business in the 1940's and 1950's. Another company I saw was Lehigh Beef, but I don't see them owning any reefers. The O.R.E.R would be a big help here if you have access to one for the era you want.