Thanks, Scott.

What were the names of the packing houses?

Bob Chaparro
Moderator

开云体育

I've been slowly adding sound modules to certain buildings to heighten the industrial ambiance.? The question is, how did it sound in a packing house?? Anything special or distinguishing?? Or any sound at all?

Some very small operations are barely a roof and walls;? probably the only sounds were people talking and the occasional thud when boxes were dropped.

What say ye!


Bill Jolitz

I’ve been told that a typical manufactured block of ice used to cool a refrigerator car load weighed about 300 pounds. That seems like a nice round number (too nice) so I did a little digging.

I know that some of the ice pans used to manufacture ice in Santa Fe ice plants were 11” x 22” x 44” so lets call this the dimension of the resulting ice block.? This is the equivalent of 6.16 cubic feet.

I know that a cubic foot of water weighs 62.43 pounds at 32 degrees Fahrenheit and water expands when it converted to ice, so an ice block should weigh less than 62.43 pounds.

Several sources I consulted say (without giving the temperature) that a cubic foot of ice weighs 57.4 pounds.? So 6.16 cubic feet of ice should weight 354 pounds coming out of the pan. Obviously, there would be a loss of volume (and thus weight) by the time a block made it to the icing platform.

Still, that nice even number of 300 pounds persists.

Tony Thompson stated, "I haven't checked all these calculations but this sounds generally right. In the various PFE documents I saw, the 300-lb. size was cited repeatedly for manufactured ice, so PFE must have largely standardized on that. Natural ice was different, in part because you harvested varying thicknesses depending on the freeze. PFE made its natural ice blocks 22 inches square and as thick as was naturally frozen. Those blocks were stored on edge, each layer thus 22 inches high, avoiding the irregularity that could result if they were stored on the broad face.

Private ice companies of course could cut any size they liked of natural ice (Pete Holst told me that Union Ice liked to cut 22 x 28 inch blocks), and private ice companies manufacturing ice could likewise produce any size they liked."

Charlie Schultz stated, "Everything I have read indicated that on the Santa Fe the blocks were 300 pounds and that the blocks measured as you indicated (11" x 22" x 44"). In shipping ice, as from one plant to another, or in loading ice in the bunkers of reefer cars, it was always measured in terms of tons.?

Regarding lake ice, the last superintendent of the Santa Fe's Bakersfield Ice Plant told me that they occasionally received shipments of lake ice.? According to him, the blocks were not always uniformly cut to the normal dimensions and, as a result, they often would not move well on the plant's conveyors and sometimes even caused jams that were difficult to undo."

Charlie also stated, "With one exception, everything I have ever found indicates that the Santa Fe ice plants produced 300- pound blocks of ice. (One article indicated that the Argentine Ice Plant, which was operated by the Railways Ice Company, produced both 300 and 400 pound blocks of ice.)? In fact, it appears that 300 pound blocks of ice were standard not only with the railroads, but also in non-railroad ice plants in the production ice for commercial (non residential) use.? I have never read anything which gave any indication that the 300-pound block of ice weighed anything other than 300 pounds.? At the same time, I have never read anything, or from my personal experiences seen anything, that indicated that the Santa Fe had any quality control measures to insure that a 300-pound block of ice was exactly that."

Bob Chaparro

Moderator

Orange County Citrus Theme Railroad In N Scale

Here is a link to a Don Vail article on modeling Orange County's citrus industry in 1948 in N scale. There also is a track plan.

The article begins on Page 122. You can jump to that page from the Table of Contents on Page 6.

Overall a good article. However, the statement that empty reefers were set out "both iced and dry depending on the produce" is misleading. The reefers were delivered with or without ice in the bunkers at the direction of the shippers, and if iced the size also was so specified. The shippers decided to ice or not based on the season, predicted weather along the route and cost of the ice weighed against these factors.

The statement the shook wood was used to assemble field boxes for the pickers also is inaccurate. Shook would was used for packing crates. Field boxes were made from heavier wood components as these were reusable containers.

Bob Chaparro

Moderator

?

Some years ago I bought a 36 inch Tichy Ice dock kit. It is still not yet built but Tony Thompson's recent blog posts on ice decks and ice turned my attention to the Tichy #8172? ice blocks that i had purchased for the dock at the same time. I discovered they are square with beveled sides. I have known since my days very long ago as a PFE revenue clerk that the blocks should be oblong on the deck before bunkering and chopping.?Tony's most recent post is?

So what's a poor boy to do with 5 packages of these incorrectly shaped blocks of ice and little hope of finding the Campbell or Sunshine blocks readily available. It takes about 10 minutes to shape a single block as shown in the photo. It's a good thing I am retired and probably will do these in front of the TV when really bored.?

1. I cut the blocks off? the Tichy sprue. I then ensure the sprue joints are fully removed with a square Xacto blade.

2. Glue two blocks together to form an elongated block with lots of glue on the surface and let dry.?

3. Use the small bastard file to eliminate the bevel and square up the blocks. Per Tony's method, I make sure the edges of the block are not sharp. Card the file often as the plastic is soft and will clog the teeth.

4. I use the file to rough up the surface before using very fine grit sandpaper for a final cloudy look. I haven't been able to fully eliminate a clear spot in the center of the block but it can only be seen when viewing the block level and straight on.?

The resulting block has dimensions close to what Tony gives for PFE standard blocks of??3.6 feet by 1.6 feet by 1 foot.



Hope this helps anyone with icing...

开云体育

开云体育

I have found Showcase miniatures excellent to deal with.

In opening my Showcase Miniature's HO Sunkist Packing Shed kit last week (I purchased it a number of months ago based on Tony Thompson's blog), I found several parts sheets and the instructions missing.? Without any hesitation, Debbie Vail responded by emailing me the instructions so I could identify the missing parts.? The parts were mailed to me earlier today.? ?I report this act of excellent customer service voluntarily.? I have not asked for any compensation for telling y'all nor do I want any.? ?Thought you should know.

Lou Adler

On Sep 21, 2019, at 08:14, Espee Bob <espeebob@...> wrote:

I’ve seen both terms used, but I’m wondering if anyone has a photo of one used in the SoCal citrus industry? I remember seeing them as a kid in the 70s here in Ventura County.

I have nothing about 1970s in Citrus, but I remember the 1950s Hyster and earlier brand straddle loaders in the lumber industry. Giggle images gives, among other things:
Wikipedia <>, and lots more; have fun browsing!
—
time stopped in 1955

I’ve seen both terms used, but I’m wondering if anyone has a photo of one used in the SoCal citrus industry? I remember seeing them as a kid in the 70s here in Ventura County.?

?

Today I visited Dave Balser. He lives near me in Hemet.

His Onion Valley Mining and Lumber Company is an On30 circa 1934 railroad set in the Sierras. There were three previous OV layouts. The first was an HO layout featured in the May 1996 issue of MODEL RAILROADING. The second was an HO layout with a HOn30 branch line featured in the June 2006 issue of MODEL RAILROADER. This layout was that same earlier layout converted to On30. All three layouts were located in Encinitas.

The current layout is a work in progress. It features the hand laid track and turnouts made using Fastrax templates. This is a point-to-point railroad with a turntable to staging shelves. The mountain-theme backdrops were painted by a local artist in Dave’s community.

Motive power includes typical logging geared locomotives and Critters. Most of the cars are ready to run wood cars from Granite Creek. Dave is a member of the Dead Rail Society and has four DCC radio controlled battery locos. Scenery is about fifty percent complete and many structures are completed.

Dave operates using a simple car card system. This system is more in tune with his small railroad theme and avoids the complexity and paperwork associated with systems designed to imitate operations on Class One railroads.

He authored an article about this system, titled "Commodity Movement System For Shortline Model Railroads", which appeared in the January 1998 NMRA BULLETIN on Pages 27-31.

Below are some photos I took.

Bob Chaparro

Moderator

Hi,
I am working on the design of a small layout based in California in the 1930s. Have been doing some research on the Sunkist logo, as my orange packing house will have a Sunkist logo on it. Always thought that it should just be white letters on a blue background, until I bumped into an image of the packing house of the Fallbrook Citrus Association. As you can see, there is colored lining around the white letters. With some further investigation, I found a similar logo, which was found in an old packing house in Upland. Looks like the lining was orange.

Thought this info might be useful to others ...

Cheers,

Jeroen

Some corrections were offered below by John Sweetser.

Bob Chaparro

Moderator

++++

I'm amazed by how ignorant Roseville and Southern Pacific historians are about the construction of the Roseville yard. There was no "transfer of the freight crews from Rocklin to Roseville."? The freight crew terminal was Sacramento, not Rocklin.? Roseville was built to replace the SP's Sacramento yard.

The purported "foremost authority" on the history of Roseville was right when he wrote:? "The formal announcement that Roseville had been selected for the site of the Southern Pacific yards brought a startling transformation for the little village," but not for the reason he suspects.

The original "little village" of Roseville was totally wiped out to make room for the SP's Roseville yard.

Definitely a "startling transformation" but one that the area's historians have been completely unaware of.