URTX 37343

Reefer

Built by November 1948. Stenciled for URTX but shows evidence of a Milwaukee Road herald. Has friction bearing journals. Currently at Jackson Street.

Close-up of the Milwaukee Road logo bleeding though the top coat of paint.

Reefers like 37343 were built to keep food or other perishable freight cold. They have roof hatches at each end for loading blocks of ice, which filled small compartments at each end of the car. The cold ice and a thick layer of insulation keep the food cold. (Mechanical refrigeration did not become common until years after 37343 was built.)

To keep the reefers filled with ice, the railroads treated the loaded reefers as top-priority freight, and every few hundred miles kept an ice house where crews would slide blocks of ice from a roof-level platform, across a gangplank, and into the reefer's ice bunkers.