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  2. How accurate is this Rock Island kit?

Re: How accurate is this Rock Island kit?

Garth G. Groff <ggg9y@...>
 

Tony,

I dunno for sure, but would like to learn. There is a photos WESTERN PACIFIC PICTORIAL by John J. Ryczkowski which shows one of these cars on the Reno local. There is at least one more which shows them at the Portola ice rack.

The conventional wisdom is that the rack was supplied by ice from Reno, possibly from the big PFE storage building in Sparks and delivered over the WP's Reno Branch to Portola. Are you suggesting they were loaded at the rack and sent elsewhere? For what purpose? Ice to service air conditioners or cabooses? These were MW cars, so I doubt that ice was shipped to any customers in them.

This looks like a good topic to discuss on the WP group. If anything interesting comes up there, I will get back to you.

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff



thompson@signaturepress.com wrote:

Garth Groff said:

The Western Pacific purchased several ex-RI reefers for ICE service in
the early 1950s. Could these be the same cars?
The WP cars are known to have served the Portola ice rack, probably
running from Reno over the WP's branch from there. It is possible they
were also used to service other ice racks on the WP or SN. The WP also
had some of their ex-PFE cars in ice service. Photos of either group are
very rare.
Garth, were the company ice cars not being LOADED at those ice decks? I
thought the decks were operated by PFE, in which case PFE would have
shipped the ice in their own cars. As the WP cars were in company service,
that is, supplying ice to facilities on line, I wouldn't have thought they
would have a role in the ice deck (except as a source of ice).
Tony Thompson
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