Getting Real Column - 11
with the external air would be desirable. For that situation, the
tariff provided for ventilation instead of icing.
Ventilation involved opening the ice hatches and latching
them in a raised position, allowing air to flow through the
car while it was moving. The idea is shown by the diagram in
Figure 12. Normally no ice would be placed in the bunkers of
a car in vent service, although the tariff did have a category
for combined service.
It is important to recognize how ice hatches in vent service
looked. The hatch plug was usually visible, as was of some of
its thickness. This can be seen in several of the accompanying
photos. Older cars had separate plugs and covers, as can be
seen in both the Figures 11 and 14
On the earliest cars, they were entirely separate, with the plug
attached only by a chain. They were closed by setting them into
the opening by hand. The hatch cover was primarily a weather
cover, and was hinged. In later years the plugs remained sepa-
rate, and were separately hinged to ensure alignment with the
hatch opening. Then when steel ice hatch covers came into
use, usually the plug was built onto the bottom of the cover,
making a one-piece part Figure 13. This matters in modeling
older cars versus newer cars, as the appearance of the plugs
will be different.
I feel obliged to point out that there is a modeler’s and railfans'
legend that cars with the ice hatches latched open were always
empty, being dried out in transit to loading areas. It is quite
true that ice reefers were pretty damp inside most of the time,
but no PFE employee I talked to had ever heard of drying out
empties. No one would have bothered, because they would
promptly get damp again with ice refrigeration. But in hot
weather, empties being delivered sometimes had hatches open
to vent any heated air from the car.
So, in general, cars with hatches positioned this way were
probably loads, and the cars were in ventilation service. Vent
service is an interesting variation on the appearance of refriger-
ator cars, and properly understood brings variation in operating
patterns. To know which crops might ship properly at higher
temperatures, Table 1 is a U.S. Department of Agriculture list-
ing of desirable shipping temperatures for a variety of produce.
Table 1: The U.S. Department of Agriculture
table of desirable transit temperatures for
produce. This was part of an extensive 1961
handbook on produce handling, shipping and
marketing, USDA Handbook 195.
MRH-Sep 2013
