12-18-2010, 02:12 PM
Tom Wrote:That's odd, I have never seen these SLC reefers before (obviously in captive service hauling spuds which is why i haven't seen them this far west), but they all appear to be ex ATSF, GN and MILW cars. These cars, you'd think, would be coming up toward the end of their 40 year life cycle, no?
In the mid 1990's or early 2000s both BNSF and U.P. were experimenting with the idea of using the latest microprocessor controlled truck reefers on mechanical refrigerator cars to see if the potential fuel savings made the conversion worthwhile as well as to find out if Thermo King or Carrier units would work better for railroad service. In the case of BNSF, they rebuilt 100 cars to original specs, 100 with T-K units and 100 with Carrier units for test and comparison purposes. The tests successfully resulted in the railroads switching over to the truck units, but at least in the case of BNSF, they had so many blue flag law violations by T-K mechanics that they pulled all of the T-K units off and changed them out to Carriers and told T-K to not allow employees to trespass on railroad property any more. Obviously that painted out ex-Santa Fe with no reporting marks is an original used Santa Fe reefer, but I wonder if BNSF sold off the 100 units they had rebuilt to original specs at the conclusion of their test period? If they did, those SLC cars might be fairly fresh rebuilds