Refrigerator car/Gallery

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  (PD) Drawing: Unknown
  An early refrigerator car design, circa 1870. Hatches in the roof provided access to the ice tanks at each end of the car.

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  (PD) Photo: Unknown
  A special fast fruit leaving Central Pacific Railroad passenger station, June 24, 1886. This train was chartered by W. R. Strong & Co. and Edwin T. Earl, fruit packers and shippers, Sacramento.

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  (PD) Photo: Chicago Historical Society
  A builder's photo of one of the first refrigerator cars to come out of the Detroit plant of the American Car and Foundry Company (ACF), built in 1899 for the Swift Refrigerator Line.

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  (PD) Photo: Swift Brands
  A view of the Swift Brands Sioux City, Iowa meat packing plant, circa 1917. All but one of the refrigerator cars in the photo bear the markings of the Swift Refrigerator Line.

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  © Image: Orange Public Library
  A crate label for Hewes' Transcontinental Brand of El Modena, California, circa 1930 depicts a trainload of Pacific Fruit Express (PFE) ventilated refrigerator cars passing near San Francisco Bay.

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  (PD) Photo: William B. Barry
  A Swift refrigerator car has reached the end-of-the-line at East Orange, New Jersey. The car has been repainted and was photographed in mid- or late-1937, after the use of "billboard" advertising on freight cars had been banned by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and such cars could no longer be accepted for interchange between roads.

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  © Photo: Otto Perry / Denver Public Library
  A steel refrigerator car (Pacific Fruit Express #458330) sits on a siding at Denver, Colorado in March 1970. The mechanical refrigeration unit is housed at the car's "A" end, behind the grill at the lower right.