While out railfanning recently I saw three CRYX refrigerated cars on a CN manifest NB through Neenah, WI. Photos are below:
CRYX (Gurnee)
CRYX (Las Cruces)
CRYX (Woodstock)
What are the city names for? I’m surmising that they’re in some kind of pool service and typically return “home” to these cities. Subject to correction, of course.
You may have the explanation. This reminds me of “Coke bottle poker.” This game was played back when all Coca-Cola bottles had the name of the bottling plants they were made for molded into the bottoms of the bottles. Each player would pick a bottle up, and would look at the bottom of his bottle. The one holding the bottle made for the plant farthest away won the round. It was fun, especially if you had a stack of crates full of empty bottles.
Johnny
No, it doesn’t have to do with where the cars are returned. One car is named Oak Brook (no railroad at all), and another is named Honolulu (good luck with that one!). Others carry names of geographic features.
This was probably started as a way to honor locations important to Cryo-Trans or its shippers, but as the fleet expanded, so did the names. You can find the name of nearly every large city, mational park, river, mountain peak, lake, etc. They even accepted some suggestions from outsiders. I know, because CRYX 3099 is named Proviso–I suggested that.
Cryo-Trans is definitely in its second generation of cars (mechanically-cooled instead of cryogenically); as the older cars were retired their names were given to newer ones. The company has close to 1000 cars, each with a different name.
Wow. I had always wondered that myself. Is there a site that lists all the names or a place to suggest new ones?
On a side note, I found a Coke bottle that was buried on the former site of a NYC station. It dated from the time of the station and was stamped Baltimore, MD. I live in west central Ohio. I would have to guess the bottle was came via the NYC. Seeing as we had a bottling plant right here. Just a curious piece of trivia.
I remember Paul Harvey doing a story a few years back about an impoverished island in the Pacific that had been used as an airfield by the US during WW2. They uncovered an old land dump the soldiers had left that was filled with thousands upon thousands of empty Coke bottles from that time. It was estimated that there were so many bottles (and so many collectors who would want them) that they could probably get millions of dollars for the bottles.
I did check on Cryo-Trans’ website today. I couldn’t find a list of these cars. I’ll keep digging!
Seems like they are named like some passenger cars. Lake of … or … Creek or … Bay.
No list on the site, but contact with the right person there should net you some results. The person with whom I used to correspond (Ruth Beauchamp) has retired, and I’m not sure who her successor is.
The names of the Cryo-Trans cars don’t seem to be in series that were as organized as the Pullman cars.