Ice and the railroads: Pt. III–railroad ice houses
rooms and a 28-foot ice room on each end. The ceiling of the rooms was 28 feet high. The ice doors and platform gigs (elevators) were 36 feet apart. (In- cidentally, this was also the typical length of a refrigerator car in the early 20th century.) This minimized the dis- tance the ice needed to be skidded or moved on a continuous chain, measur- ably reducing wastage. The Union Pacific standard ice house
was similarly symmetrical, 32 feet wide by 32 feet tall and 120 to 160 feet deep. The ice rooms were normally 40 feet deep and held about 600 tons. The reason for this uniformity is easy to see. The ice house managers tried to minimize the exposure of ice already in the house to warm air when new ice was either being added or ex- isting ice removed. The way to do this was to build an ice house with sepa- rately-insulated ice rooms which could hold an amount of ice equivalent to a week or month or some other servicea- ble amount’s supply. From a modeler’s standpoint, this manifests itself in the fact that the ice doors on the platform side of the building were nearly always 36 feet apart. If there were multiple gig elevators on the back side of the build- ing for the off-loading of cars of ice, they were almost always approximate- ly 36 feet apart, as well. There was another nearly universal condition–the materials of construc- tion. Almost all railroad ice houses and
attendant icing platforms were of frame construction. Despite the ever- present
fire hazard, the economics
strongly favored wooden construction over brick or stone construction for the same size house.25
Even the roof truss-
es were wooden, as the high humidity of an ice house relentlessly corroded steel trusses.
On the subject of insulation, the ear- ly twentieth century saw dramatic technological advancement. Air had long been considered the best insula- tor. As we earlier discussed, many ice house walls were double-sheathed with air as the insulation medium between the wall joists. In this arrangement, “ice shrinkage” (we would call it “melt- ing”) was in the 20-25% per year range. This was acceptable as long as every- one stored natural ice. As the railroads moved toward purchased artificial ice, this much loss came under very in- tense scrutiny from the guys in the green eyeshades.
Railroad civil engineers learned from their counterparts in the cold storage industry that only dead air, that is air which doesn’t circulate, in- sulates. Conversely, circulating air cre- ates warm air currents which melt ice. This prompted the move to adding
such material as sawdust, wood shav- ings and chips and even ground cork to the air spaces. Although these coarse materials trapped air and demonstra- bly reduced air flow, they were subject
Table 1: Railroad ice houses–critical dimensions and descriptions Company
Ice room size, Room capacity, Ice cake size W×L×H
tons
Gate City Ice, Co. 65′×115′×42′ 34′×34′×20′
San Bernadino, CA ATSF
Boston & Maine
Canadian Northern 24′×20′×18′ Chicago & Alton
Chicago & North Western31′×61′×30′ Burlington Route
32′×60′×? 44′×64′×? 36′×83′×43′
Rock Island Route 32′×40′×32′ Denver & Rio Grande 40′×80′×28'-8″ Erie Railroad
Great Northern Rwy. 32′×32′×? “
Illinois Central Soo Line “
Missouri Pacific NYC&HR “
25′×29′×28′ 24′×30′×?
45′×42′×31′ 30′×60′×24′ 40′×90′×24′ 40′×36′×36′ 39′×57′×36′ 48′×28′×24′
(lines east of Buffalo) 33′×32′×24′ Northern Pacific Rwy. 36′×36′×28′ Pennsylvania Railroad 38′×75′×28′ Milwaukee Rd. Union Pacific
28′×30′×24′ 32′×40′×32′
5,000 500
1,200 500
1,200 1,000 1,000 850
1,000 300 400 250
1,000 850
1,700 1,000 850 735 500 850 950 300 850
22″×44″×11″ 22″×22″×18″
24″×30″×18″ 18″×18″×30″ 22″×22″×14″ 22″×22″×10″
22″×22″×12″ 16′-0″
6′-0″ 3′-0″
10′-0″
15′-6″ and 14′-6″ 12′-0″ 16′-0″ 7′-0″
22″×22″×18″ 22″×22″×10″
22″×22″×18″
12′-0″ 8′-0″ 6′-0″
22″×32″×18″ 22″×22″×20″ 22″×38″×11″
22″×22″×12″
6′-0″ 4′-8″ 5′-4″ 5′-0″ 6′-0″ 7′-2″
Platform width
to high-humidity saturation and, con- sequently, rotting. This, in turn, led to the use of waterproof insulating paper such as the aforementioned F.W. Bird Company’s Neponset®
black paper to
line the inside walls of the house. While this represented a great im- provement,
the real game changer
came with a new product called “rock wool.” This spun limestone extrusion (the forerunner of fiberglass) had, like wool, huge numbers of air-trapping spaces. This material, in combination with the insulating paper,
drove
shrinkage down to single digits. Since they needed to build large ice houses in warm climates, the packing houses were leaders in insulation tech- nology. Accordingly, they were quick to adopt rock wool technology. A 1914 let- ter from an engineer at the Cudahy Packing Company’s ice house at Sey- mour Lake, South Omaha, Nebraska, (which used rock wool insulation tech- nology) boasted that: “. .
. we have reason to believe [this] is the best storage house for ice in the country, the percentage of shrinkage being so low as to justify us in making this assertion. I understand that we have gone through two or three sea- sons with a shrinkage of only about 4% in this house.” To the railway civil engineer charged with building or maintaining his com- pany’s ice houses, these were results to die for.
Height above rail 14′-0″ 13′-6″ 13′-6″ + 8′-0″ 14′-0″ + 8′-0″ + 6′-0″ flat
low peak flat
high peak low peak
12′-6″ + 8′-0″ moderate peak 13′'-6″ 13′-6″ 13′-6″
high peak low peak
high peak
14′-0″ 13′-6″
15′-0″ 14′-0″ 13′-6″ 13′-6″ 13′-6″ 13′-6″ 13′-3″ 13′-4″
moderate peak
high peak low peak
high peak high peak
moderate peak low peak high peak
concrete
frame frame frame frame frame frame frame frame frame
frame frame
frame frame, stucco
frame frame frame frame frame
Roof design
Construction
70
JUNE 2012
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