Stock Car (rail) - Refrigerated Cars

Refrigerated Cars

A number of attempts were made during the mid-19th century to ship agricultural products via rail car. In 1857, the first consignment of dressed beef was carried in ordinary boxcars retrofitted with bins filled with ice. Detroit's William Davis patented a refrigerator car that employed metal racks to suspend the carcasses above a frozen mixture of ice and salt. He sold the design in 1868 to George Hammond, a Chicago meat-packer, who built a set of cars to transport his products to Boston.

In 1878, meat packer Gustavus Swift hired engineer Andrew Chase to design a ventilated car, one that proved to be a practical solution to providing temperature-controlled carriage of dressed meats, and allowed Swift & Company to ship their products all over the United States, and even internationally. The refrigerator car radically altered the meat business. Swift's attempts to sell Chase's design to the major railroads were unanimously rebuffed, as the companies feared that they would jeopardize their considerable investments in stock cars, animal pens, and feedlots if refrigerated meat transport gained wide acceptance.

In response, Swift financed the initial production run on his own, then—when the American roads refused his business—he contracted with the Grand Trunk Railway (who derived little income from transporting live cattle) to haul the cars into Michigan and then eastward through Canada. In 1880 the Peninsular Car Company (subsequently purchased by ACF) delivered to Swift the first of these units, and the Swift Refrigerator Line (SRL) was created. Within a year the Line's roster had risen to nearly 200 units, and Swift was transporting an average of 3,000 carcasses a week to Boston. Competing firms such as Armour and Company quickly followed suit.

Live cattle and dressed beef deliveries to New York (tons):

The subject cars travelled on the Erie, Lackawanna, New York Central, and Pennsylvania railroads.