Model Railroading > How to plan routing for reefers?

I am in the process of making waybills for my car cards, and I am wondering about what should be done with empty reefers. We're they normally just sent empty back to their origin points, or did they carry a load if practical? I am thinking more about the PFE cars and the Tropicana trains than anything else.

Posted from Android

Chris Clouser
Frankfort, IN

I'm no expert, but in the 50's and 60's on the Rock Island's GSR here in Southwest Kansas, the westbound "drags" of 75-100 cars were all empties headed back to the Southern Pacific in the fruit & veggy fields of California.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/24 18:38 by rrman6.

I'm pretty sure reefers in general are very specific to/from the same locations. The cars really wouldn't be all that 'free roaming', because of their specialty build design. If railroads started to treat them as a normal boxcar, they could end up going very random spots. I'm also thinking they are generally more expensive to build/maintain, thus are built for specific runs/usage.

I too was just updating some of my modern day reefer routes. I learned that very few commodities actually need to be 'cold'. I took some modelers licensing and add things like candy and beer need to be shipped cold. I think mostly just meat, vegetables, and frozen goods are what ship usually. 

And yes, I'm sure there are exceptions to these general usage patterns. 

Mike ONeill
Parker, CO

It's helpful to know what era you are modeling. Generally the volume and demand of perishables moving east was such that the reefers went west empty not waiting around for a load. Occasionally a few would be reloaded with east coast seafood heading to the midwest or west coast. But that was only a tiny fraction of the traffic. The car interiors needed to be kept in good shape, so they were not part of the general service fleet and had loading restrictions. Up until the 1970's ice reefers would have to go to a icing plant near to where they would be loaded so the bunkers could be filled with ice to cool the car down. But even the mechanical reefers went to a reefer service track where they were cleaned, fueled, and cooled down prior to spotting for loading. SP had PFE service tracks at many of it's yards in the agricultural areas of Oregon and California.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

the Tropicana juice train move is well documented on YouTube.

Morpar55 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am in the process of making waybills for my car
> cards, and I am wondering about what should be
> done with empty reefers. We're they normally just
> sent empty back to their origin points, or did
> they carry a load if practical? I am thinking more
> about the PFE cars and the Tropicana trains than
> anything else.
>
> Posted from Android

Some carried meat, some LCL freight

For anything regarding PFE reefers, you owe it to yourself to check out Tony Thompson's "modeling the SP" blog.  Here's what a quick search turned up:
https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/search?q=PFE+routing

mike woodruff
north platte ne
 

Empty reefers that had een unloaded at consignees in Covingon and Clifton Forge, Va., were sometimes sent to the big Westvaco paper mill in Covington for loading, circa 1950 (perhaps before).

Art House

 

Any car with reporting marks (the initials above the car number) ending in "X" are not railroad owned and cannot be impounded for reloading without the owners permission. Frequently, such cars were stenciled "When empty return to Agent Duluth MN" or such, and usually moved on "Regular Waybills" issued by the car owner rather than than the "slip bills" written by a RR car clerk commonly used for empties.

-LS



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/24 09:45 by LarryDoyle.

I remember back in the late 70's, I would see reefers spotted at freight forwarder facilities such as Western Carloading and Arrow Lifschutz in the Carolinas.  In addition, I've seen one spotted at Cannon Mills in Kannapolis, NC for shipping towels to the west coast.  At the time, I worked for a high service truckload carrier and we made a sales call to Lifschutz in LA.  Just prior to our arrival, a UPFE reefer was spotted at the dock.  So, you can make it work on your model railroad.

bravesfan Wrote:
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> I remember back in the late 70's, I would see
> reefers spotted at freight forwarder facilities
> such as Western Carloading and Arrow Lifschutz in
> the Carolinas.  In addition, I've seen one
> spotted at Cannon Mills in Kannapolis, NC for
> shipping towels to the west coast.  
Yep, during my time on the first trick Kannapolis Switcher, I spotted RPL mechanical reefers at Cannon Mills plants 1 and 4 for reloading to the west coast - both sheets and towels.  Mostly I spotted orange Santa Fe reefers.  I understood most of them were unloaded at food warehouses in the Hickory NC area..  I heard that one of the inbound commodities was lettuce, another was bagged potatoes.  I spotted a Santa Fe reefer that still had some boxes of bagged potatoes in it at Cannon Mills one day.  I suppose the Cannon millhands ate a lot of potatoes that week.  Later on we used PFE reefers for reload there too.  I remember Western Carloading loaded mainly PFE reefers.  Arrow had a warehouse with Acme, and I can't remember what we spotted there for loading.  In ice reefer days, the western ice reefers were spotted to have the remaining ice steamed out, and loaded with backhaul west coast consolidator freight, including furniture - as was commonplace in RPL reefer days.  Also in ice reefer days, some cleaned west coast reefers were used in the Christmas season for mail loading to Atlanta and beyond.  Sometimes they were run on the rear of secondary passenger trains or in dedicated trains SOU called "Box Car Mail Trains".  I saw a film of a SOU Ps4 Pacific pulling a "box car mail train".  The use of the backhaul ice reefers for mail at Christmas time continued to at least 1965.  Somewhere I got the old train consists.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/24 19:26 by Notch7.

The Kelly Springfield Tire plant here in Tyler used to ship out 10-15 cars a day of 
new tires countrywide, served by the Cotton Belt.  They were often shorted cars
requested and occasionally the Cotton Belt would deliver empty mechanical reefers
which the KS Plant would usually reject but sometimes would fill if desperate to get
the tires out.  One time the Cotton Belt gave the plant two tank cars !
 

aehouse Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Empty reefers that had een unloaded at consignees
> in Covingon and Clifton Forge, Va., were sometimes
> sent to the big Westvaco paper mill in Covington
> for loading, circa 1950 (perhaps before).
>
> Art House

This scenario could easily be applied almost anywhere, as the loads reefers (RBL insulated types) could be picking up packing paper of various kinds that are used by the customer where they're loaded with the usual loads TO PACKAGE those loads - thus bringing "backhauls" to the original customer and generating more loads (and therefore, profit) for the RR carrier company.  Various types of packaging paper made at a paper mill would be the flat, fold-down types that are simply unfolded by the original customer where the empties go (if not loaded with backhaul), and be the packaging for whatever food or beverage product is made there and shipped out by rail on those reefers.

The large beer brewer in Williamsburg, Va. used to ship up to 40 loads of beer daily on RBL insulated reefers (non-mechanical) until CSX came into being and determined that was another "marginal" business.... soon the loads went out soley by truck and have to this day.  At the same time, the distribution warehoues that Chessie had set up with A-Busch across their system were taken out of service by CSX and that's when the trucking of their product began (according to A-Busch Transportation Department officials in Virginia, during talks about it in the mid-1980s).

Other food and beverage manufacturer customers on a railroad could also backhaul such products as bottles, aluminum cans, pallets, plastic wrap, flattened boxing (to be opened for product shipment upon arrival) and similar materials to their plants from various other RR customers, which offer wider varieties of potential traffic for any prototype or model RR.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/24 08:22 by rbx551985.

You are correct about back-hauls on reefers from WestVaco (on CSX).  Reefers were considered "clean", watertight and were used for quality paper from the West Virginia Pulp and Paper (Westvaco,) paper mill at Luke, Maryland..  When I was on the South Branch, right after we obtained our own "per diem" box cars, most were loaded out of Luke with paper, if we didn't need them for on-line shippers. Again, clean, new watertight cars were at a premium.  We also had some old U.S.Navy surplus PS-1 box cars used for intra-plant switching at Luke.  They were cheaper for West Vaco, and CSX didn't have better quality "clean" cars tied up.  A nice memory from bask in the late 70s and early 80s.

George Payne
B'more, MD