Talk:Refrigerator car

GA Re-Review and In-line citations
Members of the WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. LuciferMorgan 00:30, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

More info...
This was recently added to the article by an IP user, but needs some serious cleanup for better integration...

More information on "Moving Perishable Loads" by mechanical refrigeration. Most refrigerator/reefer cars are/were 57ft long.

One end houses a compressor and a heat exchanger. Here's how it works: Some gases(like ammonia) gather/absorb a lot of heat.(This is venting heat from inside the car to the outside). Starting from the compressor end: the hot gas is compressed, and moves through the heat exchanger. The ammonia changes into a liquid, gives up it's heat to the moving air over the coil, and by pressure, flows into a long tube-like radiator. That tube is in the roof of the car. Any heat in that space is absorbed by the ammonia, and boils it. Then it's pumped into the compressor, and the cycle repeats itself. Cargo space is heavily insulated and fitted with hollow bulkheads. A separate fan moves air throughout this space. A diesel engine is used to power the whole works. During frigid external temperatures, the diesel fuel must remain liquid as well.

Formerly, an axle generator was used. But this method didn't work as well. Because when the car stopped, so did the refrigeration/pump mechanism. Plus, the generators were also dependent on the speed of the train.

Another refrigerator car type uses a cold gas only (liquid nitrogen). At loading, a large tank of this liquid is placed in the car. A control valve is used to release the liquid, which quickly boils, and absorbs heat. Although simpler, it's more expensive. (Note that these car types are used only to move loads that must remain frozen, like fruit juice concentrates, frozen meat, ice cream.)

The car type used to move perishable, but not requiring freezing loads, is the RBL(reefer, bunker-less) type. This car features both a seal( a piece of heavy plastic glued to the sides, roof, and floor of the car),and thick insulation. The door is also insulated, and a thick seal is used on the closed door. To Load:
 * 1) the load itself is chilled, to remove heat.(i.e. a beer shipment is chilled to 6 degrees C.)
 * 2) very cold air is blown into the car-any heat is removed, and the car is chilled.
 * 3) the car is quickly loaded. Bulkheads/inside doors are used to protect the load from shifting.
 * 4) the doors are sealed and locked. Because the car, and load inside are chilled, the thick insulation and vapor barrier further prevent heat gain, the load stays cold.
 * Typical loads include: canned or bottled drinks, fruit, beer(Nicknamed "beer cars"), plywood, medical supplies, packed food, and any load that needs to be kept cold, but not frozen.

I hope to be able to do it myself later today, but if another editor can get to it and add citations to reliable sources, all the better. Slambo (Speak) 10:48, 3 October 2007 (UTC) I, John, edited a bit of this page, February 5th, 2010... (model train hobby since I was of 8 years) Grew up in Rice Lake, WI (1987 H.S. graduate)

GA Reassessment

 * This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Refrigerator car/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

GA Sweeps: Delisted
As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I believe the article currently has multiple issues that need to be addressed, and as a result, I have delisted the article. Although a few inline citations are present, there are multiple sections that lack citations throughout the article. The article has been tagged with globalize for quite some time now, this should be addressed before renominating the article. Add additional citations from a variety of sources to provide a balanced representation of the information present. Perhaps sources can be pulled from the main articles linked to within the article. Look to books, magazines, newspaper articles, other websites, etc. It may be beneficial to convert the time-line to prose instead which will allow for more discussion on the individual events. Although the article has been delisted, the article can be return to GA status by addressing the above points. Once sources are added and cleanup is done, I recommend renominating the article at WP:GAN. If you need assistance with any of these issues, please contact me on my talk page and I'll do my best to help you out. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 21:52, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Edwin T Earl in ”Refrigerator car"
“Edwin Tobias Earl was born on a fruit ranch near Red Bluff, California on May 30, 1858.[1] His father was Joseph Earl and his mother, Adelia Chaffee.[1][2][3] His brother was Guy Chaffee Earl.[1] Career

He started his career in the shipping of fruits.[1] By 1886, he was President of the Earl Fruit Company.[2] In 1890, he invented the refrigerator car to transport fruits to the East Coast of the United States.[1][2][3] He established the Continental Fruit Express and invested US$2,000,000 in refrigerator cars.[1] In 1901, he sold his refrigerator cars to Armour and Company of Chicago and became a millionaire.[1][3]“

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_T._Earl — Preceding unsigned comment added by MRETEARL (talk • contribs) 08:24, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Serious problems in the History section
Problem 1: The Background subsection ends with the following sentence:

"Meat sought a way to ship dressed meats from his Chicago packing plant to eastern markets."

Huh? Who is "Meat"? This sentence should either be clarified or removed entirely.

Problem 2: In the second paragraph of the Early attempts at refrigerated transport subsection, the following sentence is encountered:

"During the same period Swift experimented by moving cut meat using a string of ten boxcars with their doors removed, and made a few test shipments to New York during the winter months over the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR)."

The problem with the above sentence is that up to that point in the entire article, no person or entity named "Swift" has been referenced, creating considerable confusion. Later parts of the section refers to a person named "Swift" and a company named "Swift and Company", usually without making it clear to which entity is being referenced.

Problem 3: The Early attempts at refrigerated transport subsection is entirely too long and should be split into subsections.

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:52, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Top icing reefer.jpg

Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussions at the nomination pages linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 23:22, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Interior of ice bunker reefer.jpg (discussion)
 * Topping off FGE reefer with ice.jpg (discussion)

ARMN
ARMN denotes which railroad? Peter Horn User talk 12:59, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The ARMN reporting mark is owned by Union Pacific. They inherited it from Missouri Pacific, who in turn inherited it from American Refrigerator Transit Co., which owned a fleet of refrigerator cars. (refs:, , , )  Slambo (Speak)  17:15, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Mechanical refrigeration
How did this work? The article doesn’t say. -40.142.140.74 (talk) 23:44, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Error in temperature conversion
In the Cryogenic refrigeration section, the text mentioned "minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (−30 °C)", and the two units of temperature don't match each other. However, since the text contains no reference, I'm not sure which version of the temperature is correct.

Chenxiaoqino (talk) 20:17, 20 February 2023 (UTC)