Reefer Icing Cars

I found one sentence in Wikipedia, and nothing else, on something that caught my eye.

"The cars' ice bunkers were filled, either manually from an icing dock, via mechanical loading equipment, or (in locations where demand for ice was sporadic) using specially designed field icing cars."

What, pray tell, are those? What did they look like? I've never heard of them, never seen them, never knew nothin about them except this.

Anything at all, information or pictures, on such things would be appreciated.

I always take a wikipedia article itself with a grain of salt.

The source data ... may or may not be another story.

AnotherPennsyNut wrote:I found one sentence in Wikipedia, and nothing else, on something that caught my eye.

"The cars' ice bunkers were filled, either manually from an icing dock, via mechanical loading equipment, or (in locations where demand for ice was sporadic) using specially designed field icing cars."

What, pray tell, are those? What did they look like? I've never heard of them, never seen them, never knew nothin about them except this.

Anything at all, information or pictures, on such things would be appreciated.

I doubt you'd find these old ice-filled reefers anymore. The current reefer cars and their refrigeration is powered by a small diesel engine on the car itself. Then, as now, these cars you describe were used to transport fruits and vegetables. The old cars with "bunkers" of ice have long been consigned to the scrap line or converted to modern refrigeration. If you are one of those who hangs out near the railroad, listen for the sound of a small engine running as the cars pass! That will be the "cold storage", or "reefers" you are referring to. One of the jobs of "clerk" in the old days was to check all the "Fruit Express" cars for fuel, interior temperature, and make sure the little diesel engine was running. If not, call the Car peck right away!

GF

Actually a fair question - I know that since WWI railroads had 'field icing trucks' (I think Walthers offered a model in HO awhile back) - IIRC the truck had a insulated body (storing blocks of ice) and a framework in front - an icing platform - over the cab. Used to spot-ice 1 or 2 ice-reefers, say at a packing shed. I supposed that railroads could have had something similar prior to trucks becoming commonplace, except using ice-refeers themsleves to spot-ice - have no idea about the operation of this - did you need to ice car-to-car via double track, did the re-icing railcar have a icing platform attached to it, was this a one off (or extremely uncommon) and so on.

Here's a picture of a modern reefer car for reference.




It is interesting about the ice cars though. I had never thought about how it was done in the old days.

I've seen pictures of them with groups of men on TOP of the cars loading the ice into the bunkers. It was, apparently, a labor intensive operation!


GF

Aha, perhaps some useful info!

This page discusses how to build an 'Ice Serice Car' (or Reefer Service Car) - the author starts from a prototype photo of CPR Reefer Service Cars, and about a paragraph of info, and constructs one from a Funaro & Camerlengo resin boxcar kit - basically a boxcar w/ a big wooden box on the roof. Unfortunately the finished model is not shown, but enough info is provided that the OP can get the idea (and perform further searches as needed).

ETA: The term "Ice Service Car" seems much more likely to have referred to a (older, downgraded) reefer used to transported ice from sources (either ice-making plants or ice houses storing 'harvested' lake ice) to local icing platforms' storage in the produce-packing area. Googling for Reefer Service Car brings up the article I linked to above, and not much else - so be prepared to do some intesive web searching if you want further Reefer Servicing equipment images...