Paul and Russ
When talking about reefers coming out of Omaha we must remember that PFE and
SFRD had primarily fruit and produce reefers. Both companies had few meat
reefers. Check Thompson's book on PFE for specifications on this or check
the Sante Fe Historical Societies website for more information.
While Omaha would have seen a fair number of PFE reefers going through from
the west, Omaha on the other hand produced lots of meat and the meat traffic
was divided between the different railroads with lines between Omaha and
Chicago: CNW, IC, RI, CB&Q, CGW, MILW. While each RR got meat traffic each
day, I understand that each RR was assigned a day when they got a majority
of the meat traffic, ie one day a week they would have a heavy meat train or
perhaps sections of a meat train. I think the IC's day was Thursday for
example. Meat reefers were almost always leased reefers, leased by the meat
companies and lettered for the meat company or for the leasing company.
Railroads stayed away from owning meat reefers because they were a one
commodity car, hence very expensive to own/operate.
PFE had a major icing platform in Council Bluffs for icing produce and meat
reefers. It could handle 100 cars at a time. And according to a chart in the
PFE book, all six Iowa lines received PFE traffic out of Council Bluffs. So
Paul you would be safe to run those blocks of reefers. And it seems to me
that there also was an icing platform at Pacific Jct, Ia along the CB&Q.
Paul you might want to check into this.
As to blocking, I understand this was done by destination, not by the
reporting marks. You might see a group of SRLX (Swift) or ARLX (Armour) meat
reefers in a train because they came from the same meat packing plant and
were on their way to the same destination, usually the IHB at Chicago for
forwarding to Eastern roads and destination if coming out of Omaha. More
likely you would see a mixture of cars as the trains coming out of Omaha
were getting meat reefers from some 29 different meat packers. The IHB often
received entire trains of meat reefers which hopefully were blocked for
delivery to the Erie, NKP, NYC, etc. So a block for the Erie might have some
SRLX, ARLX, NADX, etc all mixed together because they are going to the Erie
for delivery to same eastern market.
I do know the SF delivered blocks of reefers to the M&StL at Nemo Ill for
delivery to Minneapolis and other northern markets. Allows me to run my
string of SFRD cars!
Douglas Harding
Iowa Central Railroad
http://d.harding.home.mchsi.com
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