A refrigerator car (or "reefer") is a refrigerated boxcar (US), a piece of railroad rolling stock designed to carry perishable freight at specific temperatures. Refrigerator cars differ from simple insulated boxcars and ventilated boxcars (commonly used for transporting fruit), neither of which are fitted with cooling apparatus. Reefers can be ice-cooled, come equipped with any one of a variety of mechanical refrigeration systems, or use carbon dioxide (as dry ice) or liquid nitrogen as a cooling agent. Milk cars (and other types of "express" reefers) may or may not include a cooling system, but are equipped with high-speed trucks and other modifications that allow them to travel with passenger trains.
History
Background: North America
After 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.Boyle and Estrada Transporting the animals to market from ranches in Texas required herds to be driven up to to railheads in Kansas City, Missouri or later to more westerly locations, such as Abilene, Kansas (1867, Kansas Pacific Railway) and Dodge City, Kansas (1872, Santa Fe Railroad), where they were loaded into specialized stock cars and transported live ("on-the-hoof") to regional processing centers. Driving cattle across the plains also caused tremendous weight loss, with some animals dying in transit.
Upon arrival at the local processing facility, livestock were slaughtered by wholesalers and delivered fresh to nearby butcher shops for retail sale, smoked, or packed for shipment in barrels of salt. Costly inefficiencies were inherent in transporting live animals by rail, particularly the fact that approximately 60% of the animals' mass is inedible. The death of animals weakened by the long drive further increased the per-unit shipping cost. Meat processors sought a method to ship dressed meats from their Chicago packing plants to eastern markets.
Early attempts at refrigerated transport
During the mid-19th century, attempts were made to ship agricultural products by rail. 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.White, p. 31 The first refrigerated boxcar entered service in June 1851, on the Northern Railroad (New York) (or NRNY, which later became part of the Rutland Railroad). This "icebox on wheels" was a limited success since it was only functional in cold weather. That same year, the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Railroad (O&LC) began shipping butter to Boston in purpose-built freight cars, using ice for cooling.
Meat
The first consignment of dressed beef left the Chicago stock yards in 1857 in ordinary boxcars retrofitted with bins filled with ice. Placing meat directly against ice resulted in discoloration and affected the taste, making it impractical. During the same period, Gustavus Swift experimented by moving cut meat using a string of ten boxcars with their doors removed, and made a few test shipments to New York during the winter months over the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR). The method proved 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. In 1868, he sold the design to George H. Hammond, a Detroit meatpacker, who built a set of cars to transport his products to Boston, using ice from the Great Lakes for cooling.White, p. 33 The load tended to swing to one side when the car entered a curve at high speed, and use of the units was discontinued after several derailments. In 1878, Swift hired engineer Andrew Chase to design a ventilated, well-insulated car and positioned the ice in a compartment at the top of the car, allowing the chilled air to flow naturally downward.White, p. 45 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, providing temperature-controlled carriage of dressed meats. This allowed Swift and Company to ship their products across the United States and internationally.
Swift's attempts to sell Chase's design to major railroads were 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 the first of these units to Swift, 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 and Company 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 (short 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.
19th Century American Refrigerator Cars: Year Private Lines Railroads Total 1880 1,000 est. 310 1,310 est. 1885 5,010 est. 990 6,000 est. 1890 15,000 est. 8,570 23,570 est. 1895 21,000 est 7,040 28,040 est. 1900 54,000 est. 14,500 68,500 est. Source: Poor's Manual of Railroads and ICC and U.S. Census reports.
Fruit and fresh produce
In the 1870s, the lack of a practical means of refrigerating peaches limited the markets available to Samuel Rumph, a Georgia peach grower. In 1875, he invented a refrigerated railcar and crates that allowed him to grow peaches on a very large scale and ship them to distant markets. He was the first to achieve this. His innovations created Georgia's fame for peaches, a crop now eclipsed economically by blueberries.
Edwin Tobias Earl was born on a fruit ranch near Red Bluff, California, on May 30, 1858. His father was Joseph Earl, his mother Adelia Chaffee, and his brother was Guy Chaffee Earl. He started his career in fruit shipping. By 1886, he was President of the Earl Fruit Company. In 1890, he invented the refrigerator car to transport fruits to the East Coast of the United States. He established the Continental Fruit Express and invested US$2,000,000 in refrigerator cars. In 1901, he sold his refrigerator cars to Armour and Company of Chicago and became a millionaire.
By the turn of the 20th century, manufactured ice became more common. The Pacific Fruit Express (PFE) - a joint venture between the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads, with a fleet of 6,600 refrigerator cars built by the American Car and Foundry Company (ACF) - maintained seven natural harvesting facilities, and operated 18 artificial ice plants. Their largest plant (located in Roseville, California) produced of ice daily, and Roseville's docks could accommodate up to 254 cars. At the industry's peak, of ice was produced annually for refrigerator car use.
On the East Coast of the United States, in 1920, the company Fruit Growers Express (FGE) was established and owned by a consortium of eastern railroads to serve the wholesale market for refrigerated produce delivered by railcar. In addition to operating and servicing refrigerated railcars, FGE became a major manufacturer of insulated boxcars and mechanical refrigerated cars.
Ice
The use of ice to refrigerate and preserve food dates back to prehistoric times. Through the ages, the seasonal harvesting of snow and ice was a regular practice of many cultures. China, Greece, and Rome stored ice and snow in caves, dugouts, or ice houses lined with straw or other insulating materials. Rationing of ice allowed the preservation of food during hot periods, a practice successfully employed for centuries. For most of the 19th century, natural ice (harvested from ponds and lakes) was used to supply refrigerator cars. At high altitudes or northern latitudes, one-foot tanks were often filled with water and allowed to freeze. Ice was typically cut into blocks during the winter and stored in insulated warehouses for later use, with sawdust and hay packed around the ice blocks to provide additional insulation. A late-19th century wood-bodied reefer required re-icing every to .
Top-icing is the practice of placing a to layer of crushed ice on top of agricultural products that have high respiration rates, need high relative humidity, and benefit from having the cooling agent sit directly atop the load (or within individual boxes). Cars with pre-cooled fresh produce were top-iced just before shipment. Top-icing added considerable dead weight to the load. Top-icing a reefer required in excess of of ice. It had been postulated that as the ice melted, the resulting chilled water would trickle down through the load, continuing the cooling process. It was found, however, that top-icing benefited only the uppermost layers of the cargo, and that the water from melting ice often passed through spaces between the cartons and pallets, with little or no cooling effect. It was ultimately determined that top-icing is useful only in preventing an increase in temperature and was eventually discontinued.
The typical service cycle for an ice-cooled produce reefer (generally handled as a part of a block of cars): The cars were cleaned with hot water or steam. Depending on the cargo, the cars might have undergone four hours of "pre-cooling" before loading, which entailed blowing in cold air through one ice hatch and allowing the warmer air to be expelled through the other hatches. The practice, dating back almost to the refrigerator car's inception, saved ice and resulted in fresher cargo. 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. The cars were delivered to the shipper for loading, and the ice was topped off. Depending on the cargo and destination, the cars may have been fumigated. The train would depart for the eastern markets. The cars were re-iced in transit approximately once a day. Upon reaching their destination, the cars were unloaded. If in demand, the cars would be returned empty to their point of origin. If not in demand, the cars would be cleaned and possibly used for a dry shipment.
Refrigerator cars required effective insulation to protect their contents from temperature extremes. "Hairfelt" derived from compressed cattle hair, sandwiched into the floor and walls of the car, was inexpensive, yet flawed over its three- to four-year service life, it would decay, rotting out the car's wooden partitions and tainting the cargo with a foul odor. The higher cost of other materials, such as "Linofelt" (woven from flax fibers) or cork, prevented their widespread adoption. Synthetic materials such as fiberglass and polystyrene foam, both introduced after World War II, offered the most cost-effective and practical solution.