Were 40’ ice refrigerator cars far more numerous than 50’ ice reefers, many of which were called “express reefers”?”
Yes.
Comparing standard reefers to express reefers isn’t a matter of length, it’s a matter of fittings. Standard reefers, both 40’ and 50’, were FREIGHT cars, with the trucks and brake fittings found on box cars and gondolas. Express reefers were designed for PASSENGER service, with passenger trucks, signal relay line, car heat steam lines and tightlock couplers (if the railroad used tightlock couplers on its passenger cars.)
The reason was found in the assignment. Express reefers ran in passenger trains, as ‘head end’ traffic - hence the need for steam lines and passenger car-compatable couplers. Ordinary reefers had standard trucks and couplers, and ordinary freight brakes, since the only occupied car behind them would be a caboose.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
In wood-car days, freight reefers would be 40’ long (with a fair number of 36’ ones still around) and special express or passenger reefers would be 50’ long. As noted above, express reefers didn’t look like regular freight cars, they were designed to be used in passenger train service.
After WW2, 50’ freight reefers started to become common (about the time new reefer construction switched to steel) but wouldn’t become more common than 40’ cars until probably after the steam era. By the sixties-eventies 50-55’ long reefers became quite common. Still 40’ woodside iced reefers did survive into the very early seventies.
Of course too in the steam-diesel transition era ‘reefers’ changed from iced cars to mechanical reefers.
There were also 40’ and 50’ express boxcars, some of which were still in service when passanger traffic languished in the 60s. By the late 60s the railroads would probably pressed them into general freight service.
Does anyone know when the “first” mechanical reefer went into service and when they became “common”. I remember them in Pueblo Colorado where my father worked at a local packing plant. It was the early 60s and we all had to make a special trip down to the plant so he could show us the reefer car that didn’t need ice. We got to “start” the cooler on the car. I remember it being quite loud.
The Library of Congress has a series of photos of a SFRD wood-sided reefer with a pulley and belt added to one of the truck axles, so it could turn the generator/compressor for a mechanical reefer. The date was just pre-WWII, IIRC 1939.
Dunno when they really became common, but post-1965 is a safe bet. Ice reefers lasted into the mid-1970s.
I would say that the early 1960s is when mechanical reefers became common. Here are the large groups of PFE mechanical reefers
R-70-12 1000 cars 1960 SP Equipment Co.
R-70-13 1000 cars 1963 PC&F
R-70-14 1000 cars 1964 PC&F
R-70-15 1500 cars 1965 PC&F
R-70-16 2000 cars 1966 PC&F
R-70-17 500 cars 1967 PC&F
R-70-18 500 cars 1967 PC&F
R-70-19 400 cars 1968 PC&F
R-70-20 1800 cars 1969-70 PC&F
R-70-21 600 cars 1969 PC&F
R-70-22 100 cars 1970 PC&F
R-70-23 100 cars 1970 PC&F
R-70-24 600 cars 1971 PC&F
R-70-24 600 cars 1971 PC&F
PFE also had small quantities of mechanical reefers built earler.
Those 1938 through early '50s photos showing a pulley and belt to one truck axle, or more often to a rubber drive wheel against one wheel tread, are not for a mechanical reefer which used a gas/diesel motor-compressor refrigeration unit; instead, they show the mechanical drive for air circulating fans. These horizontal “squirrel cage”-type blowers spanned the width of the car, mounted in the space between the floor racks and the floor in front of the ice bulkhead bottom opening. They produced an air circulation flow counter to normal gravity flow (heavy cold air falls, light warm air rises) by pulling warm air down from the top of the load and forcing it back up through the ice bunker, quickly equalizing top and bottom temperatures, then maintaining an even load temperature, to retard spoilage. They included a carside pulley and external mount for an electric or gas motor to be hung for belt drive of the fans when the car was st
Ray, I’m wondering if, rather than a mechanical reefer, these photos perhaps show the drive of a Preco cooling/circulating fan?
Cheers,
Mark.