While ‘Erie Watching’ in Narrowsburg, NY, back in the '50s, I saw lots of long trains of solid refrigerator cars. How, and why, did the Erie get all that business? What was their advantage? New York Central had direct access to the City’s west side (meat plants) and the Bronx Terminal Market (produce).
Hays
Hey, Mr. Talley Man, talley me banana! United Fruit dock at Weehawken was boon to Erie…but also West Shore and DL&W, not so much for O&W though…at least going out of NY harbor. But also Erie did good stock business from Chicago to Secaucus for pigs and beef slaughter houses there. Was it MDX? The reefer reporting marks? DL&W had a lot of them, too to cold storage and other warehouses from Jersey City north through Hoboken to Weehawken…
Aha! The secret is revealed: they grew bananas in Chicago, sent them to Weehawken, and exported them to Central America! Dunno 'bout the reporting marks, me. Wasn’t MDX for “Merchant’s Despatch”, a New York Central-owned company, or was that MDT? Never saw any livestock cars on the line. They must have killed the critters in Illinois, what with the Chicago Sanitary Canal handy for offal disposal. Never did see a freight train on the DL&W, although I spent a lot of time in Madison, NJ. Maybe they went via Boonton. Did go out to watch the “Phoebe Snow” go by, every chance I got. That was a cool train!
Hays
Actually they hauled bananas out of Weehawken in reefers, so eastbound may have been empties…but I doubt it as they hauled a lot of stuff into NY and to Maybrook (Campbell Hall) for New England points. MDT or MDX were Merchants Dispatch and were mostly on the DL&W (under the influence of the NYC via board of managers memership), and yes, the DL&W freight went over the Boonton line. I don’t know when the Erie finally stopped bringing livestock to Secaucus but they had quite a bit of this traffic from Chicago…Campville, NY was where they had to stop, water the stock and stretch their legs; also reice reefers (they did a large business in this traffic from west coast and even, at one time, and like other Empire State roads, from the orchards of the western part of the state).
I am about 95% certain that Erie was an owner of Fruit Growers Express. If so, FGE would supply FGEX cars for on line origins. FGE had a pool agreement with Western Fruit Express, a Great Northern subsidiary, and later also with BREX, Burlington Refrigerator Express by which WFEX and BREX cars were available to FGE members.
To the extent Erie handled fresh fruit & vegitables from the west coast, they would have got loads in FGEX, WFEX and BREX off the GN, NP off NP, and the big one PFE off SP and UP. I suspect westbound bananas were a backhaul for the western cars. If bananas were hauled hanging, the cars would more likely have been meat cars. Bananas are not my strong suit. Cars handling meat were probably assigned to that service as they were set up differently than FFV cars.
Mac
Wasn’t the FFV on the C&O? [;)]
Merchants Despatch Transportation used MDT, not MDX, for its reporting mark. I do remember seeing some MDT (and possibly some NRC) cars with the Lackawanna logo on the sides.
Of course, that was in the fading days of ice reefers. I don’t recall the EL participating in the RBL orders held by other railroads that owned FGE, at least until 1974 or 1975, when they got that gorgeous batch of blue reefers.