Getting Real Column - 9
15: An illustration
of loading orange
crates into a PFE car,
using a hand truck.
Note that crates are
not loaded to full car
height, to assist air
circulation, and that
crate dimensions
permit stacking so
that no crosswise
dunnage is needed.
Standard interior
dimensions of PFE
cars were vital to
shippers. – “Dick”
Whittington photo
for PFE, courtesy
CSRM.
15
artificial ice plant in the world in its day. In a number of places
where mainline trains were iced in transit, such as Roseville
and Ogden, PFE operated 110-car island decks, meaning a 110-
car train could be spotted on each side of the deck for icing.
Even a 20-car deck, fairly small in PFE terms, would be 880 feet
long, or more than 10 feet long in HO scale, pretty large for
most layouts.
Luckily for modelers, there were much smaller and more
numerous icing facilities, called Ice Transfer Plants or ITP,
where PFE did not manufacture ice. This might mean that a
commercial ice company made the ice, Union Ice Company is
an example throughout much of California. This might mean
that the facility had only an ice storage house, and ice had to
be brought in, usually by rail.
MRH-Sep 2013
