So why did the Canadians continue to build overhead bunker cars, while U.S. reefer fleet owners did not? I explored this point at some length in the PFE book (Pacific Fruit Express, 2nd edition, Thompson, Church and Jones, Signature Press, 2000, page 150–53), and will only summarize here.
The Canadian railroads did handle produce in end-bunker reefers, but also had the problem of export meat shipments, in which cars might sit at the port for a time before their cargo was loaded onto a ship. The overhead bunkers did a better job of keeping cargo cold in those circumstances. Moreover, car fans were not as practical in a severely cold and snowy winter climate, as is true of much of Canada. But back to my own interest in the subject.
I have a special interest in Canadian reefers, on account of something that happened when I was a teenager first getting interested in scale model trains. I had built a couple of car kits, but they were really chosen at random. Then I happened to be in my local hobby shop of the era (the Brass Hat on Pacific Avenue in Glendale, California) and saw a new Varney reefer kit, for a gray Canadian National reefer. I was thunderstruck! I had just seen a car like this in Los Angeles while on an errand with my dad. My gosh! There were kits for cars just like the ones you could see on the rails! I bought one and built it, and was very pleased with myself.
I know in hindsight that those Canadian reefers in Los Angeles were almost certainly carrying export beef, but of course in those days I had no idea about cargoes or car routing. But at that time, it was just a kit for a model which looked (to me) just like the CN car I had seen. It was gray, it had red lettering, it was a refrigerator car . . .
Now in fact the Varney reefer is not really much like the prototype CN car. But at that point, I wasn’t sensitive to car characteristics, and almost certainly had not noticed the “extra” ice hatches on the roof of the prototype car, not to mention other features like the underslung heater. I was just delighted to have a model of a gray CN reefer that globally was like the prototype I had seen.
I still have that model, and it still boasts its original Varney dummy couplers, evidence that I have never seen fit to upgrade the car to operate on any of my layouts since my teenage days (when all my cars had Varney dummies).
The weathering is brushed-on paint, not too terrific, and of course neither the boxcar-red ends nor the black ice hatches are prototypical — but I didn’t know that then.
This is now a current topic because True Line Trains in Canada has recently brought in ready-to-run models of the steel overhead bunker cars. I chose one with the same paint scheme as in my historic Varney model. But of course the TLT car has all the right appliances, all eight roof hatches, and so forth. A big step forward as a model, but the Varney will live on in my display case.
This photo shows the side of the car with the underslung heater, just visible behind the center sill step. The model is weathered and has a route card.
There have been kits through the years for the overhead-bunker reefers. Ambroid had one, and I think the Funaro & Camerlengo one is still available. But this one didn’t need to be built, and appears accurate to me. So that is why I am now happy to have a new and correct model of a car that has only had a pretty lame version in my freight car fleet for all these years.
Tony Thompson
I bought two of the True Line reefers. One is CN like yours and the other is a CP car. I'd be interested to know if you've looked at possible routings to get a car of Canadian beef to the LA area.
ReplyDeleteNot yet, but a former SP employee told me that he thought the Southern California ones probably came down from Vancouver. I am trying to find out shippers and receivers, if I can, so I can do proper waybills. All Canadian cars were supposed to be returned promptly to Canada after unloading, either empty or carrying a load destined inside Canada. There is ample evidence that this was not always followed, and that sometimes Canadian cars were reloaded for U.S. destinations not even closer to Canada. But I plan to route the empty cars directly back to their original U.S. port of entry.
ReplyDeleteWhen I find out some routing and shipper info, I will probably write a blog post with the information. I am also finding out the same info for the CP "slab-side" covered hoppers for U.S. destinations, and will include that.
Tony Thompson.
I suspect the statement "those Canadian reefers in Los Angeles were almost certainly carrying export beef" is speculation. These highly successful 8-hatch reefers were specifically designed and built to transport any load that required temperature protection at any time of the year to any destination in North America. The ORER listings indicating that they were fitted with meat rails has mislead some to think that these reefers were exclusively for meat. In fact meat was only one possible commodity. They commonly carried fresh fruit, frozen fruit, frozen vegetables, meat, dairy, beer, fresh fish, frozen fish from numerous origins across Canada to destinations in Canada and the USA. These reefers were built to gradually replace CNs and CPs large fleets of aging end-bunker wood reefers. RMC published three informative articles on these reefers in Dec 95, Jan 96 and Feb 96. Also the trade press published many articles including -- 'Refrigeration Engineering' April 1943 and Feb 1953, 'Canadian Transportation' Jan 1946, 'Railway Mechanical Engineer' Jun 1940, July 1950.
ReplyDeleteWe have discussed this before, John. Your reading of the two articles in _Refrigeration Engineering_ differs from mine. I believe both the Townshend and Lentz-Cook 1953 articles emphasize the export of meat in these cars, and in a discussion of Lentz-Cook's article, which was published in the journal, A.W. Pentzer of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture made this point about Canadian meat exports, and was not contradicted by the authors of the paper. Capabilities of the Canadian designs were impressive, especially for Canadian conditions, and are not at issue.
ReplyDeleteTony Thompson
I suspect the reason 8-hatch reefers were designed and built in Canada, much less in the U.S., was the basic difference in the transportation industry in Canada and U.S. In the U.S. there were numerous private refrigerator companies such as ART, PFE, FGE, MDT and WFE operating their separate large fleets of reefers. None of these private companies operated in Canada and there were no equivalent private companies operating in Canada. All the services that these American companies provided in the U.S were provided in Canada by the CNR and CPR. Being acutely cost conscious, both CN and CP felt it was uneconomic to operate and maintain separate fleets of reefers for season-specific commodities. They each decided it was more cost effective to operate and maintain a fleet of all-purpose reefers, even though they were more expensive to build. CN and CP did not operate and maintain separate fleets of reefers for produce, dairy, meat, fish and fruit. One fleet did it all for CN and one for CP. There is no evidence that indicates CN or CP operated separate commodity-specific fleets of reefers.
DeleteBTW there is photographic evidence of CN 8-hatch reefers being loaded with fruit in the Okanogan valley and the Niagara peninsula.
There has never been dispute about the capability of the 8-hatch reefers to carry any refrigerated cargo. I merely observe that to use a car that had carried meat, for any other cargo, such as dairy or produce, required a VERY thorough cleaning. If you don't know why, ask any housewife about handling raw meat. So although the CN and CP fleets may have been versatile, I would wager that cars in meat service would not be freely assigned to produce and vice versa, unless need was great and the railway was prepared to spend the time and money for the cleaning.
ReplyDeleteTony Thompson
These cars were more expensive to build to be suitable for all types of loads requiring both heating and cooling. There is no evidence that any were reserved for specific loads. That would have defeated their intended function. In his article in vol.45 no. 4 April 1943 "Refrigerating Engineering" J.L. Townshend, CNR General Supervisor Perishable Traffic, included a list of loads handled in these then-new general-purpose reefers which included numerous loads of apples, frozen eggs, frozen livers, Wilshire sides of pork, frozen fish, frozen meats, potatoes. The various destinations were listed. John Riddell
ReplyDeleteJohn, I fail to understand why you keep repeating the same point about the ABILITY of the cars to carry a variety of loads. That's never been in dispute.
ReplyDeleteYou also continue to ignore my question whether CP and CN in fact spent lots of time and money cleaning meat cars so they could carry non-meat loads, or whether they did segregate most of the cars for one service or the other, with perhaps a small group of "crossover" cars.
I also would note that all of the cars were equipped with meat rails and brine tanks, and classified as AAR Class RAM, certainly a meat car class. I remain interested to hear what proportion of loads in the overhead-tank cars were ACTUALLY other than meat.
Tony Thompson
Tony, I suspect that both CN and CP staff spent a great deal of time, effort and expense cleaning their thousands of reefers so that they were VERY clean. After all they had a long experience in shipping food products for shippers all over the country coast to coast. These cars were equipped with meat rails to be able to ship meat when needed so it was correct to class them RAM - another class would be inappropriate. The 1943 Townshend article lists 23 shipments in 1942 in the CN cars of which five were meat. At this time CN had only about 250 in service. So that is a proportion of 79% of those early shipments were actually other than meat. Another list of 57 shipments (compiled by Michael Livingston in 2005) indicates that 10 were meat - that is 83% were other than meat. These expensive cars were specifically designed and built to be flexible to carry any commodity anywhere winter or summer as CN and CP did not want to limit them to specific functions--to get maximum benefit from their investment. Reserving a batch of these cars to ship a specific commodity would be opposite to their purpose. Does this help ? John Riddell
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you concede that a great deal of time effort and expense would be involved in using the same cars interchangeably for meat and produce
ReplyDeleteCurious strategy, to build relatively expensive cars, fully equipped for meat, and only ship meat 20 percent of the time. Of course your proposed sample of only 80 total shipments is awfully small, and the 1943 sample in particular may well have comprised some demonstrations.
I would assume there were commodity data collected in Canada which might allow more perspective, but don't myself have access to such resources.
"Reserving a batch of cars" for certain cargoes is, of course, exactly what the entire rest of the world did with refrigerator cars. It still sounds like a simple and practical solution to me.
Tony Thompson
I don't know the source of the data but Livingston's list of shipments includes "1939-40 car testing" shipments -
ReplyDeleteApples -- Kelowna to Montreal
Bananas -- New Orleans to Omaha
Oranges -- Florida to NYC
Oranges -- California to NYC (840 crates)
Frozen fish -- Boston to Chicago (no re-icing required)
I suspect both CN and CP kept some data of commodities shipped in these reefers.
The variety and the intra-U.S. moves clearly suggest tests. Would like to see more if they exist.
ReplyDeleteTony Thompson
Unfortunately I have no more info on those U.S. tests. I suspect a U.S. organization borrowed or leased several of the new CN cars for testing shipments.
ReplyDelete'Railway Age' of June 8, 1940 describes testing of the 8 hatch reefers in the US and Canada. For example the shipment of bananas in an overhead bunker reefer was clearly superior to IC end bunker reefer 50286. The 8-hatch reefers are described in 3 articles in RMC -- Dec 95, Jan 96 and Feb 96. John Riddell
ReplyDeleteThee is no question that the overhead bunker design provided much better temperature uniformity in the load than an end-bunker car. But about the time the overhead bunkers were being tested, car fans were also introduced, and it turned out that a fan-equipped end-bunker car was ENTIRELY as good as a car with overhead bunkers. Plus end bunkers gave a location for car heaters in the winter, whereas the Canadian cars carried the burden of year-round permanent heaters under the car.
ReplyDeleteTony Thompson
The 8-hatch overhead ice cars were designed for, and used in, year-round service in a cool/cold climate. As such having permanent heaters was important. During year-round operation their heaters were used possibly as much, or more as their 8 overhead ice containers. Apparently axle-driven fans were thought to not be reliable in ice and snow conditions. Incidentally a very realistic paint colour for the CN cars is Model Master 4766 Camouflage Gray. John Riddell
ReplyDeleteJ. L. Townshend was my grandfather. In 1937, he took a pair of experimental overhead bunker reefers (and his teenaged son, my father) out to Prince Rupert BC. The two cars were actually equipped with ten hatches each, not the eight that became standard. They were loaded with fish and returned successfully to Montreal. So, yes, the cars were quite capable of carrying fish.
ReplyDeleteAs late as 1958, my grandfather ordered more ice reefers before he retired. I have talked to CNR employees from the car shops here in Leaside ON. They all agreed that CNR's various experiments with mechanical reefers in the 1950's were less than satisfactory. Since ice was readily available, that was considered the way to go at that time.