Hi,

There's a 3 page article , with a photo of S.L.R.X. 4539, on the 150 composite steel-plywood cars the Saint Louis Refrigerator Car Co. built in 1947, in the March '48 issue of Railway Mechanical Engineer. These cars were 42' over the strikers.

The article mentions that SLR built 25 composite steel-plywood reefers in 1940.

I have no data concerning Swift Refrigerator Lines SRLX cars, although I *think* they were based out of Chicago.

Cheers, Roger

Les Beckman wrote, "Wouldn't have any photos would you?"


Yes.

From the number series you mention it would seem to me that these are SRLX and not SLRX. IRM has several of the Swift cars, mostly steel cars with a horizontal lap seam on the sides, a trademark, in a way, of a GATX design.

These and many others, especially meat reefers, remained owned by GATX and thus their subsequent donation en masse to many museums. The meat packers (and some railroads) leased them and applied their own reporting marks - which could often change.

Case in point is one of our OSCAR MAYER meat reefers, and as the paint peels, bright red SWIFT underneath.

Bob Kutella

For years, many, if not most of the meat reefers were shorter 36 ft cars, whether wood or steel cars. The usual 40 footers were more common in fruit and veggie service. At the end of the ice bunker era, it seems there were a few companies that used 40 foot meat cars.

Yes, many of the newer steel cars were 36 ft. I have been told that the reason was the aging infrastructure of the meat packing plants themselves. When many were built the 36 ft car was a de facto standard. So the loading door spacing on long sidings facing the buildings, were spaced for those short cars.

Adding a longer car meant there would be one unused space somewhere to get them back to line up for the next spots.

Some of the newer SWIFT cars with mechanical refrigeration were 50 footers if not mistaken. But those were routed to newer facilities. I seem to recall stenciling for Guyon OK on at least one Swift reefer. That is, they were not part of a general pool but had specific routing instructions - WHEN EMPTY RETURN TO xxxx.

Bob Kutella

There are two Swift reefers parked behind the carbarn of the Fox River Trolley Museum in South Elgin, IL. They've been used as store rooms for years and are in very sound condition (at least as of a couple years ago the last time I closely looked at them)

Unfortunately for any purposes outside their current warehouse-on-wheels status, they're pretty much locked in place, with the carbarn having been built in place with no means to connect the cars to existing track. I suppose the track the cars sit on could be connected by replacing the missing 40-50 feet or so to end of track inside the barn, and a door cut in the end wall,, but I suspect the effort and cost is nowhere near worth the effort.