AY Honors/Model Railroad/Answer Key
A refrigerator car (or reefer) is a refrigerated boxcar, a piece of railroad rolling stock designed to carry perishable freight at specific temperatures.
History
Background
Following the end of the American Civil War, Chicago, Illinois emerged as a major railway center for the distribution of livestock raised on the Great Plains to Eastern markets. Getting the animals to market required herds to be driven distances of up to 1200 miles (2000 km) to railheads in Kansas City, Missouri, whereupon they were loaded into specialized stock cars and transported live ("on-the-hoof") to regional processing centers.
Driving cattle across the plains also led to tremendous weight loss, and a number of animals were typically lost along the way. Upon arrival at the local processing facility, livestock were either slaughtered by wholesalers and delivered fresh to nearby butcher shops for retail sale, smoked, or packed for shipment in barrels of salt.
Certain costly inefficiencies were inherent in the process of transporting live animals by rail, particularly the fact that about sixty percent of the animal's mass is inedible. The death of animals weakened by the long drive further increased the per-unit shipping cost.
Gustavus Franklin Swift began looking for a way to ship dressed meats from his packing plant in Chicago to the East.
Early attempts at refrigerated transport
A number of attempts were made during the mid-1800s to ship agricultural products via rail car. As early as 1842 the Western Railroad of Massachusetts was reported in the June 15 edition of the Boston Traveler to be experimenting with innovative freight car designs capable of carrying all types of perishable goods without spoilage. The first refrigerated boxcar or "reefer" entered service in June 1851, on the Northern Railroad of New York (which later became part of the Rutland Railroad). This "icebox on wheels" was a limited success in that it was only able to function in cold weather.
The first consignment of dressed beef to ever leave the Chicago stockyards did so in 1857, and was carried in ordinary boxcars retrofitted with bins filled with ice. Placing the meat directly against ice resulted in discoloration and affected the taste, however, and therefore proved to be impractical. During the same period Swift experimented by moving cut meat using a string of ten boxcars which ran with their doors removed, and made a few test shipments to New York during the winter months over the Grand Trunk Railroad (GTR). The method proved to too limited to be practical.
Detroit's William Davis patented a refrigerator car that employed metal racks to suspend the carcasses above a frozen mixture of ice and salt. He sold the design in 1868 to [[George Hammond[[, a Chicago meat-packer, who built a set of cars to transport his products to Boston. The loads had the unfortunate tendency of swinging to one side when the car entered a curve at high speed, and the use of the units was discontinued after several derailments. Finally, in 1878, Swift hired engineer Andrew Chase to design a ventilated car that was well-insulated, and positioned the ice in a compartment at the top of the car, allowing the chilled air to flow naturally downward.
The meat was packed tightly at the bottom of the car to keep the center of gravity low and to prevent the cargo from shifting. Chase's design proved to be a practical solution to providing temperature-controlled carriage of dressed meats, and allowed Swift and Company to ship their products all over the United States and internationally.
Swift's attempts to sell Chase's design to the major railroads were unanimously rebuffed, as the companies feared that they would jeopardize their considerable investments in stock cars, animal pens, and feedlots if refrigerated meat transport gained wide acceptance. In response, Swift financed the initial production run on his own, then – when the American roads refused his business – he contracted with the GTR (a railroad that derived little income from transporting live cattle) to haul the cars into Michigan and then eastward through Canada.
In 1880 the Peninsular Car Company (subsequently purchased by ACF) delivered to Swift the first of these units, and the Swift Refrigerator Line (SRL) was created. Within a year the Line’s roster had risen to nearly 200 units, and Swift was transporting an average of 3,000 carcasses a week to Boston, Massachusetts. Competing firms such as Armour & Co. quickly followed suit. By 1920 the SRL owned and operated 7,000 of the ice-cooled rail cars. The General American Transportation Corporation would assume ownership of the line in 1930.
Live cattle and dressed beef deliveries to New York (tons):
| (Stock Cars) | (Refrigerator Cars) | |
| Year | Live Cattle | Dressed Beef |
| 1882 | 366,487 | 2,633 |
| 1883 | 392,095 | 16,365 |
| 1884 | 328,220 | 34,956 |
| 1885 | 337,820 | 53,344 |
| 1886 | 280,184 | 69,769 |
The subject cars travelled on the Erie, Lackawanna, New York Central, and Pennsylvania railroads.
Source: Railway Review, January 29, 1887, p. 62.
- Reefers-shorty-Armour-Kansas-City-3891-Pullman.jpg
- Reefers-shorty-ATSF-CM-type-1898-cyc ACF builders photo.jpg
A rare double-door refrigerator car utilizing the "Hanrahan System of Automatic Refrigeration" as built by ACF, circa 1898. The car has a single, centrally-located ice bunker.
- Pfe722.jpg
An express-style refrigerator car, designed to travel with high-speed passenger trains.
A pre-1911 "shorty" reefer bearing an advertisement for Anheuser-Busch's Malt Nutrine tonic. The use of similar "billboard" advertising on freight cars was banned by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1937, and thereafter cars so decorated could no longer be accepted for interchange between roads.
Mechanical refrigeration
In the latter half of the 20th century mechanical refrigeration began to replace ice-based refrigeration. The mechanical refrigeration units proved their worth in replacing the "armies" of personnel that were no longer needed to re-ice the cars periodically.
A modern refrigerator car. Note the grill in the lower right where the mechanical refrigeration unit is housed.
- Cutaway PFE mechanical.jpg
A cutaway view of a conventional mechanical refrigerator car.
- ARMN 110386 detail photo by JS Rybak @ Clarke Ontario Canada April 2005.jpg
State-of-the-art mechanical refrigerator car designs place the removable, end-mounted refrigeration unit outside of the freight compartment in order to facilitate access for servicing or replacement.
Cryogenic refrigeration
During the 1990s, a few rail car manufacturers experimented with the use of liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) as a cooling agent. The move was in response to rising fuel costs, and was an attempt to eliminate the standard mechanical refrigeration systems that required periodic maintenance. Several hundred "cryogenic" refrigerator cars were placed into service transporting frozen foodstuffs, though they failed to gain wide acceptance.
References
- Boyle, Elizabeth and Rodolfo Estrada (1994) "Development of the U.S. Meat Industry" — Kansas State University Department of Animal Sciences and Industry.
- Kutner, Jon Jr "Swift and Company" — The Handbook of Texas Online.
- Swift & Company (1920) The Meat Packing Industry in America. Swift & Company, Chicago, Illinois.
- Thompson, Anthony W. et al. (1992). Pacific Fruit Express. Signature Press, Wilton, CA. ISBN 1-930013-03-5.
- White, John W. (1986). The Great Yellow Fleet. Golden West Books, San Marino, CA. ISBN 0-87095-091-6.
- White, Jr., John H. (1993). The American Railroad Freight Car. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland. ISBN 0-8018-5236-6.
External links
- Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railway #21335 — photo and short history of a steel-sheathed "billboard" car.
- Fruit Growers Express Company #35832 — photos and short history of an example of the wooden ice-type "reefers" commonly placed in service between 1920 and 1940.
- Fruit Growers Express Company #56415 — photos and short history of an example of the wooden ice-type "reefers" used in the first half of the 20th century for shipping produce.
- Pacific Fruit Express Company #11207 — photo and short history of one of the last ice-type refrigerator cars built.
- Pacific Fruit Express Company #300010 — photo and short history of one of the first mechanical-type refrigerator cars built.
