For those who hate Yahoo’s search, here is the gist of Richard’s message #70293

Dairy Shippers' fleet varied a lot over the years, as it consisted almost entirely of second-hand cars.  Early in its history, Dairy Shippers actually shipped dairy products, as I have a poor quality photo (undated, but probably late 1920s or early 1930s) of a DSDX car with billboard lettering for the Litchfield Produce Co. of Litchfield, Wis., shippers of, to quote the lettering on the car side, " fancy eggs, butter, poultry, canned eggs."  (Canned eggs?  Say, what?)  By the post-WW-II period, however, DSDX traffic was mostly, if not entirely, beer, and though its second-hand reefers kept their ice hatches, the bunkers were removed and they were listed in the ORERs as RBs, that is, insulated box cars.  As his been previously noted on this list, continuing to call the company Dairy Shippers Despatch, though its main source of revenue was beer, was intentionally misleading, as cars that were known to carry beer were chronic targets for pilferage.  I have two photos of DSDX RBs from the early 1950s, and though different, both are former Merchants Despatch Transportation Co. (i.e., New York Central System)refrigerator cars.  Unfortunately, there are no HO scale kits for either car, but they are 40' wood sheathed reefers of typical dimensions and construction, so it should be fairly easy to kitbash one from a Branchline or Accurail reefer kit.

RE: his comment regarding “canned eggs”. There were facilities in the mid-west that cracked eggs on site, then shipped them, sans shell, in large 5 gallon tin cans to bakeries, etc. There was also a market for hard boiled eggs and pickled hard boiled eggs, which were “canned” in gallon size glass jars. No doubt Litchfield Produce was providing such service.

Appreciate Tony’s reference to the excellent book “Billboard Refrigerator Cars” by Hendrickson and Kaminski. I would have turned to my copy, but it is packed awaiting the movers. The book contains some excellent citations about companies who owned the reefers photographed. I believe Gene Green’s “Refrigerator Car Color Guide” by Morning Sun, may also have some Dairy Despatch images.

The Jim Sands collection contains a slide of a DSDX plugged door car #5172 with a MILW logo and lettered Refrigerator, coupled to a second DSDX car #5352. Taken in the 60’s it shows 5172 was blt 5-51 and reweighed MS 11-60

To complicate things, there is this image http://s291.photobucket.com/user/djs_ank_ak/media/BeerRailcars/DSDX_8174_Chicago_1972.jpg.html Though it appears it was taken long after the cut off date of this list, so may be irrelevant to our discussion.