HO Scale Product/Prototype Questions

NEVER SAY "NEVER" TO MY COMMENTS BELOW! Railroads are always creative when it comes to $$$!

----------------------------------------------

In the hey-day, not likely. The produce transporting business was vicious.

Again, not likely since these were expedited west coast to the Midwest/East shipments going at a fairly expensive rate. Once the blocks got to the point of distribution - Chicago mostly - then the cars would be tacked onto other fast freights. But coming from the West coast they went in blocks with the biggest, newest, heaviest, fastest locomotives. This is why UP had Big Boys.

Depending on contents, these would come ahead of most classes of passenger trains. Time is money shipping refrigerated produce.

Santa Fe was the blood enemy in the refrigerator business. Santa Fe had a shorter, direct route from SoCal to Chicago. UP didn't.

The Santa Fe car would likely "disappear" somewhere in Wyoming!

CTucker NY

Great input - thanks!

I will look to create two separate refrigerator trains. I have an eight car Union Pacific PFE consist, and we own one ATSF 'El Capitan' refrigerator car and one Northwestern refrigerator car.

The InterMountain ATSF refrigerator cars are difficult to find images of - I prefer the cars that have the black, visible door latches. The numbers that I have found are: 46103, 46104, 46106, 46111, 46114.

Might anyone know an internet site to view images of these specific InterMountain ATSF refrigerator cars?

Thanks You!

Matt=A0&=A0Kathleen=A0Brennan wrote: Also, regarding the Union Pacific "Fruit Express Train":

1) is it OK to add other, non UP refrigerator cars to this consist? 2) would it be OK to add a non refrigerator car to this consist? 3) where on the priority list did they reside [after passenger? before livestock?] ??? 4) If there were Santa Fe refrigerator cars mixed into this consist, could I use a Santa Fe engine to haul this consist? If a Santa Fe is OK, which color scheme would be appropriate?

-------------------------------------------------- "The Great Yellow Fleet" by John W. White might be a book you'd be interested in reading. It tells the history of the American refrigerator cars:

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad: History of N Scale: Links to over 600 helpful sites:

Excellent - thank you! I'd enjoy reading it very much.

---Also, regarding the Union Pacific "Fruit Express Train": ---

--------------------------------------------------- Here's a photo gallery from UPs website with some PFE pix that might provide some ideas for scenes on your layout:

Good luck with your project!

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:

History of N Scale: Links to over 600 helpful sites:

Midwest/East

Generally Livestock trains had the fastest schedule, because of the "36 hour" rule. Livestock could not remain in the car longer than 36 hours without being let out to be watered and fed. Thus, railroads wanted them over the sytem as fast as possible, to minimize the number of times they had to off-loaded/reloaded.

Often you'd find fairly large stockyards out in the middle of nowhere, with no real connection to the "outside world", and no logical reason for being there. These were the "feedlots" where the stock trains would stop to do said feeding.

The ABSOULTE fastest schedule however was a fairly unique operation on some of the northern roads during the early years of the 20th. century. These were the "silk trains", often only a locomotive and one or two special "silk cars". The price of silk imported from China would fluctuate hourly in New York, so the importers had to have their product in the New York market as fast as possible once it arrived at Seattle. A delay of an hour or two could mean a difference of thousands of dollars in the profit on a shipment.

Don

-- snipped-for-privacy@prodigy.net

snipped-for-privacy@yahoogroups.com moderator: snipped-for-privacy@yahoogroups.com co-moderator: snipped-for-privacy@Yahoogroups.com

On Sun, 31 Aug 2003 22:02:33 UTC, Matt & Kathleen Brennan wrote: 2000

You would find other reefers in a PFE consist. They would be a distinct minority.

Fruit blocks as they were called would be solid reefers.

Livestock probably highest because of rules and possible loss. Fruit (or lettuce) blocks had priority over passenger trains. I knew an ex Pullman attendant who said that they would go into the hole on Espee to let the lettuce trains go.

Typically PFE kept their cars and SFRD kept theirs. It would be very unlikely to see a Santa Fe loco pulling that many PFE cars. Espee locos to Ogden.

If you want to find out more about PFE than you ever really want to know the book to get is "Pacific Fruit Express" by Thompson, Church and Jones. Although it is strictly PFE you will learn everything there is to know about the reefer business.

On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 13:13:21 UTC, "Trainman" wrote: 2000

You forgot Espee. A lot of those silk shipments hit San Francisco.

On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 21:31:34 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@cox.net (Ernie Fisch) shared this with the world:

And both Canadian railways.

In 1928 Vancouver loaded 143,845 bales of silk from ships to trains. Seattle loaded 245,278,and San Francisco 133,224. By 1930 Portland and Los Angeles had also gotten in on the silk game in a small way, but by then more was moving to New York via the Panama canal than any of the western ports. And by 1931, Panama had more than all the western ports combined.

In 1926 the fastest time for a silk train to go Vancouver-Toronto-New York (2885.7 miles) was 83 hours, 56 min. The fastest a passenger could make the same journey was 105 hours, 5 min.

(No my memory isn't that good. Silk Trains (the romance of Canadian silk trains or "the silks") by Bernard Webber ISBN:0-9696187-1-9 )