Layout operations in peak harvest season

In my most recent post, I described renovation of an old Athearn metal reefer, which happens to be an MDT car. In that post, I mentioned not only SP’s use of such “foreign” or off-road reefers for canned goods, effectively using them as insulated box cars in the days before such box cars were significant parts of the national car fleet, but also their use in peak harvest season (that post is at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/08/improving-that-athearn-steel-reefer.html ). 

Mere hours after that post went up, I received a question by email, asking if I would say more about the peak harvest issue. I am happy to do so, since it’s a topic I find interesting.

Some years ago, I posted a report of part of my analysis of an SP Coast Division conductor’s time book, which happened to include entire trains of empty reefers being moved to Salinas for loading, during 1948–52. This book showed that only 76 percent of the reefers were PFE cars, with the remaining cars to be loaded made up of foreign cars. (Here’s a link to that post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/02/modeling-freight-traffic-coast-line.html ). 

That value of 76 percent is in line with other records of PFE operations in peak harvest season. I commented on that in a later post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/08/foreign-reefers-in-pfe-territory.html ). 

Also, as mentioned in the post just cited, we know that the major sources of these foreign reefers were American Refrigerator Transit (ART), Fruit Growers Express (FGEX and associated fleets, such as BREX and WFEX), and Merchants Despatch (MDT), along with BAR cars borrowed in the non-potato-harvest months of the year.

Here’s one example: a photo (by Dallas Gilbertson) of the Guadalupe Local returning toward San Luis Obispo, with ten loaded reefers in vent service. Eight are PFE cars, but two are ART cars. Note also, by the way, the considerable range in dirtiness of these cars.

To choose just one additional example on the Guadalupe Subdivision, below is a detail from a Richard Steinheimer photo, showing either the Guadalupe local or the Surf Turn in February 1956, when Baldwin road-switchers had supplanted steam. The train today happens to be 10 cars, the rear 9 all reefers. Interestingly, the first two are a FGEX and a BREX, while there is an ART car third ahead of the caboose (barely visible at right).

For the reasons apparent in these prototype photos, I love to carry out an operating session on my layout set in the peak harvest season, because a bunch of foreign reefers need to be present. As some readers doubtless remember, on my layout, each operating session is conducted as though it was the current date, but in 1953. So if I were operating today, the idea would be that it’s August 25, 1953. 

I do plan an operating session in the next month or so, and among the models in that session will be the BREX car that I inherited in a partly completed state from Richard Hendrickson (completion of which was shown in an earlier post; see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/07/upgrading-accurail-reefer-part-3.html ). It’s shown below at the Coastal Citrus shipping warehouse in my layout town of Santa Rosalia.   

Another example would be an ART car, probably the most common foreign reefer used by PFE. This model is shown as a load being picked up by the Santa Rosalia Local at the Guadalupe Fruit shipping dock in Ballard on my layout.

And finally, a relatively new BAR reefer is about to be spotted by the local switch job as an empty for loading at the Phelan & Taylor packing house at Shumala on my layout.

This kind of inclusion of a real seasonal pattern for an operating session is fun for me, and I try to convey it to my operators so they can appreciate what they are seeing and doing.

Tony Thompson