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Authorized Micro-Trains® Dealer |
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Swift Premium Special 3-Pack
36' Wood Sheathed Ice Reefer with Modern Steel Underframes
Swift Premium Ham #S.R.L. 1944
Swift Premium Bacon #S.R.L. 18527
Swift Silverleaf #S.R.L. 2464
MTL-58512 N Scale Supply Price $
Released: November 1998
Picture courtesy of Micro-Trains®
Gustavus P. Swift was an influential figure in the development of the refrigerator car for the shipping of dressed meat. He believed this method to be more profitable than carrying live animals. When the Grande Trunk Railway offered to ship his refrigerator cars on their lines, Mr. Swift acquired the assistance of J.C. Chase, an engineer from Boston and experimented with the principles of circulation and refrigeration in transit. The general arrangement of the appliances used in the "Swift-Chase" car, remained the same until the 1960's, when they were replaced by mechanical refrigeration. The wood body construction was preferred over steel (even long after steel cars came into existence) because of the general belief that wood was superior as a natural insulator and would not rust when contacting the salty brine from the ice bunkers. By the turn of the Century, steel underframes were becoming standard for mainline freight.
Picture courtesy of Micro-Trains®
These 36' Wood Sheathed Ice Reefers with modern steel underframes are painted box car red with reefer yellow sides. The lettering is black on sides and white on ends. Built in the early thirties these cars were cooled, insulated and equipped with overhead rails for hanging carcasses. Steel underframes began to replace truss rods as early as the WWI era. The longevity of these reefers gives evidence of the type of care and treatment they received; they were lightly loaded and were returned frequently to their owners for maintenance and repairs. Both truss rod and modern metal underframes were seen together into the mid-'50's. 36-ft. wood-bodied meat reefers were still being built new in the late 1940s and early 1950s, some of these cars remained in revenue service into the 1970s.
Picture courtesy of Micro-Trains®
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