ATCHISON, TOPEKA & SANTA FE RAILWAY

 

Refrigerator Car No. 16811

 

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Refrigerator cars, also called "reefers," kept perishable fruits and vegetables cold while transporting them from California and the Southwest to markets in the North, East, and Southeast.

This 40-foot car was built in 1922 for the Santa Fe Railway. It was cooled with 300-pound blocks of ice loaded into its end bunkers from icing platforms at the point of departure, then was re-iced daily along the way. By the 1970s, ice-cooled reefers were mostly replaced by mechanical reefers which had a refrigeration unit installed at one end.

After seeing service all over the U.S., this car was eventually acquired by Cactus Distributing of Phoenix, who donated it to the museum in 1990.

This car was built by the Pullman Company for the Santa Fe Refrigerator Department (SFRD) in 1922. It was originally built as a class Rr-X with steel center sill, wood sides, and wooden ice racks and bunkers, then during a 1955 remodeling it was given steel sides and steel floor racks and was reclassified as an Rr-23.

The SFRD reporting mark originally stood for Santa Fe Refrigerator Despatch, a separate company formed in 1903 to transport perishables. In 1918 during WW I, the United States Railroad Administration (USRA) took control of the nation's railroads and didn't relinquish it until 1920. When USRA took control of SFRD in 1918, the Santa Fe Railway converted it from a separate company into an operating department of the railroad and changed its name to Santa Fe Refrigerator Department. The reporting mark remained SFRD.

The size of the SFRD fleet expanded to some 18,000 cars in the 1930s, second only to that of its main competitor, Pacific Fruit Express. It dwindled by the 1970s, then began rebounding. The Santa Fe Railway and all its departments merged into the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway in 1995.

Cactus Distributing donated this car to the Arizona Railway Museum while still retaining its earlier-style ice racks. It was delivered by Mid-State Trucking & Rigging, then was forklifted onto the museum's Armstrong Park trackage on Erie Street on February 26, 1990. In 2006 it moved along with the rest of the fleet to the museum's new location at Tumbleweed Park.
11/25/2006 - View of the refrigerator car at Tumbleweed Park.
1994 - The car at Armstrong Park.
2/26/1990 - A view of the car as delivered to Armstrong Park.

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