Shipping oranges on my layout

Oranges are probably the canonical California fruit, and although the area I model, the Central Coast between San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria, was not prime orange country, I do know that navel oranges were indeed grown on the Nipomo Mesa, adjoining my fictitious branch line to Santa Rosalia. So that is a crop I can include.  

Oranges in California come in two distinct varieties, the navel and Valencia varieties, and they have different seasons. Below is the crop table for fruit in the area I model, called Guadalupe–Santa Maria. It’s taken from a much larger table that covers the entire Southern Pacific, on pages 442-447 in Pacific Fruit Express (2nd Edition), Signature Press, 2000.

What is shown above for oranges is the navel variety, peak harvest December to March, with lesser harvesting in November and April. By contrast, Valencias in California are harvested from March to October, with peak season  in May to August. This nicely complements the navel season, though the area I model was not Valencia territory.

I have chosen to identify just one of the five packing houses on my layout with orange shipment. It was common for packing houses to specialize in this way. As I have previously described (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/08/produce-shipping-boxes-part-2.html ), I created orange box labels for that packing house, Phelan & Taylor, by modifying a prototype orange box label (used in the real world by a Los Angeles distributor): 

At the packing house, I show field boxes of oranges. Field boxes were large containers used in the orchard during harvest, much larger than the familiar orange crate that was shipped to market. I received these 3D-printed boxes from Robert Bowdidge, and painted the contents in different colors for different fruit and vegetables, orange of course for oranges but also for apricots.  

Then of course waybills are needed. I use a number of destinations, mostly on the East Coast, though Midwestern destinations also appear. Here is an example, including the well-known “capacity” of a standard PFE ice car interior, 462 crates: 

The car that is listed in this waybill, PFE 9071, is part of PFE’s Class R-40-26, and it’s shown below at the East Shumala packing house of Phelan & Taylor for loading. 

The seasonality of orange harvest fits perfectly into my general operating approach, that we treat whatever day we are operating as that day in 1953. So if we were operating on my layout today, May 13, the harvests and other seasonal features will be those of May 13, 1953. Orange seasons fit perfectly into that process. 

Tony Thompson