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Tim O'Connor
Sterling, Massachusetts

New York Despatch was a reefer line operated by the Grand Trunk Railway dating from before they were taken over by Canadian National in the 1920's (1923 as I recall)
The GT lines west of the international border at Sarnia/Port Huron (which had always had somewhat of a separate identity) became formally the Grand Trunk Western in 1928. They kept the NYDX until about 1944, when they started renumbering the reefers into GTW, which process continued into the mid 50"s. To make things more confusing, there were before WWII some wood frame reefers that carried GTW marks. An ACF builders photo of one of these ca. 1912 shows a car lettered "Grand Trunk"
with a small" GTW" initials on the lower left corner of the side.
Larry King

Thanks to all for the input.

Here’s what I know so far -

The “later” photo dates to post 1963 - based on the fact that a large “pregnant tapeworm” interlocked CV is most likely the lettering on the car in the far left edge of the image.
The earlier photo likely dates to 1920 or slightly earlier based on the PRR GG class car, the ATSF Bx0, and the arrangement of the building - specifically the water tanks - shown in the 1920 Sanborn Map.

I’m going to assume that for the 1920s+ era the building looked more like the later photo than the earlier one - but ideally would like to locate a dated photo from between 1918-20 and 1963+ to confirm that.

Marty

Have you looked at Historic Aerials? The aerial photos might help you determine when the factory configuration changed. I’m in the process of doing the same thing for a cannery in Maine  

Rich Gibson

Rich,