As I have mentioned numerous times in this blog, operating sessions on my layout are always treated as being on the same day on which we operate, but in 1953. Among other things, this means that the packing houses on the layout are always shipping the crops of that particular month. I introduced this background some time back (see for example my post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/09/seasonality-of-crops-and-traffic.html ).
Recently I was asked (again) about the source of the information, and would I please put it all in one place. It’s drawn from the multi-page table on pages 442–447 in the back of the PFE book (Pacific Fruit Express, 2nd edition, Thompson, Church, and Jones, Signature Press, 2000). That table covers all of the SP, with individual growing areas for each crop. Since the area I model is what was known as the Guadalupe–Santa Maria area, I have just chosen data for that area in the tables below.
These tables, vegetables and fruit separately, are very useful in that they show peak harvest months in black, with off-peak or “shoulder” harvest months in gray. I usually only choose waybills for peak-month produce in setting up a session for a particular month. The one exception is all-year broccoli, which does get shipped in most sessions. But notice that at least one fruit and one vegetable is being harvested in every month of the year in the area modeled.
The other point to be made is one about PFE in general. During the peak harvest months over the entire SP and UP systems, June through September, even PFE’s fleet of roughly 40,000 cars was not sufficient for all needs, and reefers of other owners were borrowed. Most of this activity was on SP, which often advertised how much of American produce was loaded on its lines (I’ve show these ads in a number of previous posts, including this one: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/05/sps-public-advertising.html ). Here’s an example:
In that peak season, scenes like the one below, at a packing house in my layout town of Shumala, were commonplace. American Refrigerator Transit (famously jointly owned by Missouri Pacific and Wabash) was one of the companies from which PFE borrowed extensively.
A scene like this is more relevant at the moment than during much of the year, because I have an operating session coming up later this month.. Scenes like this are, once again, going to fit the 1953 season we will be reproducing.
Tony Thompson