While planning a modular scene featuring an old style icing facility one of my club members mentioned that there used to be a facility for precooling reefers before they were iced and loaded. Does anyone know what these facilities looked like? Is there a model of such a facility in HO?
Pre cooling was and is still used to cool produce to remove field heat. It’s purpose is to lower the temperature of the produce to a temperatire suitable for storage or transit.
Farmers often pre cooled the produce prior to loading it into pre-iced refrigerator cars delivered to the loading facility by the railroad. The pre cooling might br done on permanent facilities or could be done using portable equipment.
Some but not all Icing plants had facilities to pre cool produce in refrigerator cars. This was for produce that had not been pre cooled prior to loading. There were several methods of in car pre cooling:
1 Using bunker ice by operating fans. Car mounted or portable fans couls be used - often both at the same time.
2 Mechanical pre cooling units permanetely located along the tracks or portanle units mounted on ttucks.
3 Top icing the load
- Blowing cold air through the car from the ice plant.
This site has brief descriptions of the different methods of pre cooling prior to storage or transit:
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex7463
The same methods were used in the days of the Ice reefer. As described on Pages - 347-349 of Pacific Fruit Express 2nd edition. There are a few pictures of car pre cooling facilities. At some locations pre cooling was done in sheds, at others on open tracks and at others from icing platforms.
Pre cooling sheds could be completely enclosed or have open sides. One photo shows a vacuum pre cool facility for truck trailers or railroad reefers. It’s a thick walled structure with massive doors on both ends
In the meat packing industry, after the interior of the reefer was steam cleaned, it was iced and then went to the pre-cool track before the swinging beef was loaded. Current frozen veggies are loaded in RBL’s(no refrigeration), and the frozen ‘load’ keeps everything cool for a week.
Jim
Here’s a link to a pic on Shorpy showing the interior of a pre-cooling facility in 1943: