I’m modelling the period from '38 to '53 and am including a smalling icing plant in my mid point yard. I’m generally familiar with the layout and standard operating process but have come to the realization that i know nothing about the supply of salt to brine reefers. How was the rock salt delivered (I assume bags)? How was it distributed to the cars (hand trucks, dollies, carried bag by bag, some other way)? How was the salt delivered to the platform (elevator inside the icehouse, outside crane, conveyor)? Anybody who can give me information on this is appreciated. Thanks
I’m curious about this as well. I also believe that sawdust was brought in for insulation of the ice in the ice house, but not sure and also what type of car used - gon?, but wouldn’t the sawdust get wet and lose it’s ability to insulate?
You know I didn’t think of the sawdust. Gives me another car movement from the sawmill. Thanks
Well,
Brine is simply saltwater. Ice sometimes was shipped in from the north in reefers. Then stored in Sawdust until ready. Thomas Jefferson had a Ice House at Monticello. Over winter he had ice chopped and stored there where it was used in summer.
I think Refridgeration was used to create blocks of ice. I have seen ice houses load reefrers by a walk way from the top or by dump truck where a block is dragged up a ladder and allowed to fall into the car’s bunker.
Salt could be shipped two ways. By a covered hopper or in large tote bags in boxcars. such as found in the old Akzo mine near Horseheads NY.
The sawdust idea of feeding the icehouse is pretty good. Thanks!
I bet the intraplant delivery for blocks etc was by elevator, conveyor lift etc.
Mechanical reefers killed icing in the mid 50’s and today the railroads have reefer cars connected by satellite to the refridgeration provider’s base and troubled cars can be repaired or refueled trackside within a short time.
Best of luck
Lee
By 1938 most ice faclities used ice manufactured on site. I have seen movies of ice loading where scoop shovels of salt were broadcast over the ice in the car bunkers just before the hatch was closed. How it was delivered to and stored at the plant is a good question. Use of salt was probably appropriate for moving frozen products. Regular movements of produce probably did not need the salt. That is a question for a produce manager.
In the early days of refrigerator cars, natural ice was a major commoditiy harvested from lakes at high elevation and moved from there in refer cars or box cars packed in sawdust. Many lumbering operations turned to ice harvest when the phisical plant was no longer needed for lumber production. The sawdust stock piles and any covered structure could be turned into an asset to store natural ice. The ice house located on a siding could be another source of revenue for your railroad.
In the early days of West Coast cities, sailing vessels were used to haul ice from as far away as Kodiak Island in Alaska. Southbound ships from Sitka, Alaska often backhauled Ice to Sanfranciso. Early railroads provided a continuation of this trade from locations such as lake Tahoe.
Santa Fe had a small fleet of cars to handle salt for use in refrigerator cars. I understand the cars handled salt from a mine at Hutchinson, Kansas and traveled to Galveston, Texas among other destinations.
The cars were classed as boxcars but were said to have been converted to “refrigerator car standards” whatever that means.
The reefer salt cars were converted from former Kansas city Mexico and Orient 40’ truss rod box cars.
There is info and photos of these cars in two books from the Santa Fe Railway Historical and Modeling Society. (www.atsfrr.org)
“Refrigerator Cars, Ice Bunker 1884-1979” p.254
and
“Santa Fe Boxcars 1869-1953” p.72
Since the Kennebec River area in Maine used to export ice to places all over the world for over 100 years, in this area it is well known that sawdust was by far the best insulation they could find in the 1700s & 1800s. Ships would leave thier ports to deliver ice to places like Japan, Australia, Europe, and so on. Can’t imagine they’d have stayed in business for that long if the insulation was no good! Also, around here, anyway, Ice was CUT from the bays and cove along the river, not produced.
Before I went to work on the SP, 1960, the ice deck in Roseville,Ca got it’s ice from the various frozen lakes in that area and stored it in the “ice houses” until need in summer time. It then was convayered out on to the ice decks were it was droped into the refers ice bunkers. A worker would chop it down with a very long fork. Later, like in '66, the use of machines to chop the ice and then into the bunkers, quite a process. The use of mechinical refers was started around that time, which required a whole different set of refuling etc.
There already have been several good answers to the original question. Here are three more responses to this topic, all taken from messages posted on my Yahoo group, Citrus Industry Modeling Group. Please feel free to drop by. It’s free.
Bob Chaparro
Moderator
Citrus Industry Modeling Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/citrusmodeling/
1.In the 2d Qtr 1989 “Santa Fe Modeler” there is an article by Jay
Miller on building a Santa Fe-style Icing dock, based on the dock at
Amarillo TX. The article includes plans, which themselves include
plans for the Salt Storage house located under the deck itself. The
Salt Storage House was a lean-to type building, with v-groove siding
and corrugated tin roof. It was 20’ x 8’, and had three 4’ 8" doors
located across the front.
- Courtesy of Thompson’s PFE book (Page 346), we do know that when
needed up to 5 pounds of salt were used per hundred pounds of ice (5
percent by weight) to cool fresh produce. Twelve percent salt was
used for meats and a maximum of thirty percent for frozen foods.
This would lead me to suspect that five percent or less was all that
was used for citrus, when it was needed.
- As has been stated, salt was added to the ice bunkers of reefers to
increase the rate at which the ice would melt, thus resulting in
lower tempatures in the reefer. The amount of ice and the amount of
salt, if any, to be put into a reefer was set by the shipper and, of
course, depended largely upon what was being shipped.
I am most familiar with the Santa Fe’s Hobart ice plant in Los
Angeles, but I believe all the Santa Fe ice plants operated in a
similar manner. At Hobart, salt was brought to the ice plant and,
using shovels and manual labor, was put into burlap bags. The bags
were filled by weight, and I believe each bag was 50 pounds. The
weighing was done by a large, in