How often did a reefer need icing? Say a car of frozen poultry.
Clark Propst
Mason City Iowa

Clark,
The Mojave desert in the summer, or the Dakota plains in the winter? (VBG)
Paul Lyons

Clark Propst wrote:

How often did a reefer need icing? Say a car of frozen poultry.

Clark, frozen food was iced about the same as produce, but with salt additions. It was common though certainly not universal to re-ice every 24 hours. Shippers could specify any interval they chose, or could specify that bunkers were to be refilled 'as required," meaning whenever they got down to half-full. Ice deck employees had a pretty idea how the weather would be affecting ice, so would check any incoming cars that were likely to be low. They knew the icing specification of each car, of course, from the waybill.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

You also neeed to know your era to determine how far appart the re-icing facilities needed to be.  As C TC and diesels became more common, especially in the Florida to Chicago routes, they dropped middle platform levels from being regular to emergency service facilities.  Through trains might not need re-icing but switched off cars, to be switched the next morning might need to be top ped off.



Al Kresse

When did they start to ship frozen poultry?

Al,

Good point. On the Union Pacific’s Kansas Division, the installation of CTC in 1953 sped up schedules between North Platte (a major classification yard in Nebraska) and Kansas City (where the UP handed off reefers to other carriers). Prior to 1953, reefers were regularly re-iced at Marysville (between North Platte and KC); afterwards, icing at Marysville was the exception, not the rule.

Regards,

-Jeff


From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of water.kresse@...
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 1:45 PM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Icing frequency




You also neeed to know your era to determine how far appart the re-icing facilities needed to be. As C TC and diesels became more common, especially in the Florida to Chicago routes, they dropped middle platform levels from being regular to emergency service facilities. Through trains might not need re-icing but switched off cars, to be switched the next morning might need to be top ped off.

Al Kresse

----- Original Message -----

From: "Anthony Thompson" <thompson@...<mailto:thompson%40signaturepress.com>>
To: STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 4:34:31 PM
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Icing frequency

Clark Propst wrote:

How often did a reefer need icing? Say a car of frozen poultry.

Clark, frozen food was iced about the same as produce, but
with salt additions. It was common though certainly not universal to
re-ice every 24 hours. Shippers could specify any interval they chose,
or could specify that bunkers were to be refilled 'as required,"
meaning whenever they got down to half-full. Ice deck employees had a
pretty idea how the weather would be affecting ice, so would check any
incoming cars that were likely to be low. They knew the icing
specification of each car, of course, from the waybill.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...<mailto:thompson%40signaturepress.com>
Publishers of books on railroad history

24 hours huh. Not frozen poultry sound reasonable too.

Here's why I asked. I have a poultry processor on the layout. I was told the reefers were iced by the elevator where the artificial ice company truck could get next to the cars to ice them. (photos show reefers by the elevator's coal sheds) Then they were moved to the chicken pluckers.

For my operating sessions:
Ops 1 - I have the switch crew spot an empty reefer by the ice truck parked next to the elevator. After some time they move the car to the poultry place. We'll say they have the car iced in the morning and have it spotted for loading in the afternoon.
Ops 2 - The next day. Car is picked up and added to a train that leaves town early evening.

It is over 24 hrs from the time the car is iced to when it leaves town.

But, for model operations I think I've pretty much covered the moves the real railroad would have made.

Clark Propst
Mason City Iowa

I don't know the specifics of poultry packing, but there were two ways reefers were iced. The bunkers were loaded with block ice along with salt to lower the temperature, but they were also iced through the main door with a truck that blew crushed ice into any available open space. I have some old video of this crushed ice being blown into a reefer containing vegetables, but I don't know if this technique was ever used for poultry.

My research has only turned up a truck from the local artifical ice company. The only photo I have (In Gene's reefer color book too) shows only ice blocks.
But, a friend remembers stopping to pick up ice chunks from reefers spotted at wholesale grocery and produce places on the Milwaukee here. So, the ice company had to be able to 'top off' chunked ice cars too..?
Clark Propst

hacketet (not signing his name) wrote:

I don't know the specifics of poultry packing, but there were two ways reefers were iced. The bunkers were loaded with block ice along with salt to lower the temperature, but they were also iced through the main door with a truck that blew crushed ice into any available open space. I have some old video of this crushed ice being blown into a reefer containing vegetables, but I don't know if this technique was ever used for poultry.

If by "block ice" you mean 300-pound full blocks, NOPE. Never done. The largest pieces put into bunkers were approximately quarter blocks, of about 75 pounds. Some ice manufacturing plants made blocks of about 120 pounds, and these were split in half to put into bunkers. I can list the tariff sizes of ice pieces if anyone is interested.
Under the perishable tariff, bunker icing was priced and scheduled differently from "top icing," which is the crushed ice blown over the top of a load. That was mainly to keep the car contents damp, not mostly for cooling. If cooling right in among the load was needed, large pieces, like the 50-75 pound pieces I mentioned, were positioned among the shipping crates. This was called body icing.
Salt was not normally used for produce, but certainly was essential for frozen food. If chickens were shipped, they might or might not be frozen, and if not, salt probably was not needed. Salt lowers the "melting temperature" of the salt-ice mixture below that of water ice alone, and thereby speeds up melting of the ice--which in turn means heat is sucked out of the load faster. But that's only necessary upon initial lading, when the cargo may not be down to shipping temperature yet. You don't need to do that with most cargoes once they are cooled to transit temperature. The big exception is frozen food.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Clark Propst wrote:

My research has only turned up a truck from the local artifical ice company. The only photo I have (In Gene's reefer color book too) shows only ice blocks.
But, a friend remembers stopping to pick up ice chunks from reefers spotted at wholesale grocery and produce places on the Milwaukee here. So, the ice company had to be able to 'top off' chunked ice cars too..?

The perishable tariff specified what each size of ice would be, when the shipper chose it for a particular load. There were three "official" sizes, and of course the sizes are approximate values. The largest was "chunk ice," defined as pieces "not to exceed 75 pounds," which was a fourth of the usual manufactured ice block of 300 pounds. The second size was "coarse" ice, meaning 10 to 20 pound pieces (melon size). The smallest was "crushed," which is not like what we civilians think of as crushed, because it meant pieces the size of a man's fist.
If you look carefully at ice deck photos, there is usually one workman who is splitting the big blocks into smaller ones, and passing them to the man or men busting them up into the ice hatches.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Thanks for the clarification on sizing Tony.

Clark Propst

From what I could find in my limited research, on my road, the cars were checked (inspected) at least either every twenty four hours or at major yards and iced as needed. As part of this, bunkers were opened and a choice was made as to ice them. In addition, if looking full, a steel rod was shoved down to see if the ice had melted into a hollow false roof, looking full, but empty below. (I have several letters copied admonishing crews to be certain to check for this. As you can guess, these letters were claim follow ups).
One of the more important things that came out (to this list anyway) was whenever a car is interchanged, it was inspected, both checking the temp inside the car and ice in the bunkers as once received, problems if any were then the new railroads concern. The expectation seemed to be that a car was to be interchanged with no immediate needs. I am not sure how many on this list could set aside a yard track just for inspection service at an interchange point, although I am thinking this would be an interesting thing to have.
Of another interesting note, on the NP, some priority expedited reefers were interchanged at St. Paul Union Depot. Some, if going east of Chicago, were specified to be re-iced just prior to interchange in St. Paul as that allowed them to be run east to less busy icing stations on the Q, MILW, or Omaha, which were just short of Chicago, and that re-icing then helped propel them through Chicago without a re-icing stop.
I had published some data for our societies MAINSTREETER some time ago. I'll see if I can find my notes and put some extracts in the files area. Jim Dick – St. Paul