Reefer serving as a storage shed next to a corral on a Kern County, California, ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
My Notes:
Class Rr-43 ice bunker reefer from Series 8600-9132. 534 cars.
Other Rr-43 series were 9133-9144. 9135-9367 and 9368-9369. All four series (770 car total) rebuilt in 1947 from Classes Rr-X through Rr4.
Fishbelly underframes were carried over from the original USRA-style design.
When rebuilt the car kept its reverse-opening hatch covers. Notice this car at some point after the rebuilding received conventional-opening hatch covers, that is, the hatch covers opened towards the center of the car rather than over the ends.
This car also received a sliding plug door at some point after the rebuilding. SFRD 9133, 9144 9368 and 9369 were the only cars that received sliding plug doors in the 1947 rebuilding program. The late Richard Hendrickson stated the Santa Fe equipped all new and rebuilt SFRD cars with sliding plug doors beginning with the Rr-48 class in 1950 and also retrofitted to many earlier Santa Fe cars in the 1950s.
Between 1959 and 1961 the Rr-43 fleet dropped from 736 cars to 467. There were 213 cars in 1968, 112 in 1971 and 14 in 1973. 1973 was the year that the ICC permitted discontinuance of bunker icing for refrigerator cars. The railroads no longer were required to re-ice reefers in transit on their lines. This meant that large reefer fleet operators such as PFE and Santa Fe no longer could rely on other railroads to re-ice interchanged reefers.
Bob Chaparro