Here is a link from the Trainweb site showing the large Baltimore & Ohio West 26th Street Freight Station and Storage Warehouse on July 7, 1951.  The location is between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues in Manhattan.  There is a second B&O facility (West 24th Street Freight House) closer to the camera.  The structure to the left is the B&O and Republic Carloading Freight House.  The Republic section previously was operated by Seaboard Freight.

 

http://members.trainweb.com/bedt/indloco/bo26aerial1951.jpg

 

Click on the image to enlarge it.

 

In between the freight houses are at least nine stub-end tracks.  Notice the three successive refrigerator cars (One Great Northern, one SFRD and one PFE) among all the boxcars.  Dunnage is visible in the open doorway of the SFRD car. There is another PFE car closer to the camera in the first fully visible row. 

 

This was not a refrigerated freight house as far as I know and there is no rooftop equipment to indicate refrigeration facilities.  The smaller freight house closer to the camera likewise does not have refrigerated facilities.  In all likelihood the cars were used to ship products that required some protection from heat or rapid temperature changes. (It’s July, remember.)   

 

It is not as likely these cars were shipped to New York with some of the other items occasionally carried in reefers heading west such as newspapers and magazines from East Coast publishers, tires, furniture and various clean items such as canned goods, candy and boxed items, or LCL shipments from mail order houses.

 

Lastly, as there were three driveways between the various tracks it is possible whatever was unloaded from the reefers never went into either freight house but was placed on trucks.

 

This building is still standing.  The sign on it at street level (courtesy of Google Maps Street View) reads “Bedrock Mini-Storage”.  All signs of track in this area are gone.

 

Bob Chaparro

Hemet, CA