A railroad refrigerator car, also called a “reefer,” was a boxcar cooled by ice. These ice cars had heavy insulation, roof hatches, floor drains, and ice bunkers. Ice bunkers were built into each end of the car and manually filled with ice through hatches on the car roof. A refrigerator car could only travel a few hundred miles before it would need re-icing. It took 9,000 to 11,000 pounds of ice to fill a car's ice bunkers, and a single block of ice could weigh as much as 400 pounds.
Gelatin dry plate negative. L 20.5, W 26 cm
Steamtown National Historic Site, STEA 7469.
B258