More on the citrus industry and refrigerator cars
Realistic Layouts: Industries you can model online bonus
By Keith Jordan
Published: Thursday, April 19, 2007
Keith Jordan described the history, facilities, freight cars, and rail operation associated with California's citrus industry in the MR special issue How To Build Realistic Layouts: Industries you can model.
Below, Keith lists helpful print and Web resources for model railroaders who want to learn more about the citrus industry and its refrigerator cars.
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If you want to know more about citrus packing houses, what they looked like then and what they look like now, I highly recommend Jim Lancaster's Historic Packing Houses and Other Industrial Structures in Southern California Web site. Jim's site is chock full of photos and drawings of packing houses throughout southern and central California. It's updated fairly regularly and has links to other sites of interest as well.
If you want to talk with others about modeling the citrus industry, I suggest you join Citrus Modeling Group on Yahoo!Groups. This group was started and moderated by Bob Chaparro, who does a good job of keeping everyone on the subject. It's a great place to learn and share more about this fascinating industry.
The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collections, available online at the Library of Congress' American Memory site, has information on several packing houses.
Specifically, the site has files (text, drawings, and photos) of National Orange in Riverside, Calif., Escondido Orange in Escondido, Calif., and College Heights Packing in Claremont, Calif. The files include surveys of the buildings with histories, operations, and pretty much everything you would want to know about the subject. The Arlington Heights file also contains information related to the citrus industry, particularly the groves which surrounded Riverside. [Don't overlook the Gage Irrigation Canal in Riverside file, which has some cool drawings showing how the canal worked. - K.J.]
There have been some good books on the citrus industry. One notable effort is Citrus Roots...Our Legacy by Richard Barker, published by the Upland, Calif., Community Foundation in 2004. Volume II of III, subtitled Citriculture to Citrus Culture, is available through the City of Upland. Volume II deals with the history of packing houses in the area and includes many photos.
If you want more information on Pacific Fruit Express refrigerator cars, I recommend the book Pacific Fruit Express by Anthony W. Thompson and Bruce H. Jones. It's available from the publisher, Signature Press, at www.signaturepress.com.
For more on Santa Fe Refrigerator Despatch refrigerator cars, a reprint of Santa Fe Refrigerator Cars: Ice Bunker Cars 1888-1979 by C. Keith Jordan, Richard H. Hendrickson, John B. Moore, and A. Dean Hale is available from the Santa Fe Historical and Modeling Society at www.atsfrr.com. A companion volume on SFRD mechanical refrigerator cars is due out summer 2007. - Keith Jordan |
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