More Thoughts On Rail Dairy Shipments From California

More research on the web shows that the dairy industry has been very important in California since the early 20th century. For instance, I found this photo from the 1920s of the California Central Creamery in Arcata, CA:

Arcata is Northwestern Pacific territory. Railroad tracks in the foreground suggest rail shipments of dairy products took place here. I have a DVD covering the last years of the Northwestern Pacific under SP and the North Coast Rail Authority that shows butter moving even in the 1990s in PFE 57-foot mechanical reefers.

Cheese isn't mentioned too much as a rail-shipped California dairy product. In fact, it isn't completely clear how dairy products were shipped in earlier years. Common products from San Joaquin Valley creameries were powdered and evaporated milk, which probably didn't need refrigeration and could have been shipped crated in boxcars. On the other hand, Railex, a fairly new refrigerated logistics company, advertises its ability to ship dairy products, as well as beer and wine, in current-generation refrigerator cars. Much of this business comes from California.

Leprino Foods, as I've mentioned a major rail shipper, came into the California market sometime after the 1970s with the growth of fast-food pizza. From Forbes,

In the 1970s, Wisconsin and New York were producing most of the country's milk, but California's nascent dairy industry often priced milk lower. Leprino had the foresight to engage in some arbitrage, locking California dairy farmers into multi-decade contracts at rates that were often above-market locally but below-market nationally. Over the next two decades, Leprino Foods also signed sweetheart deals with co-ops that eventually became the Dairy Farmers of America, securing a lasting milk supply with the country's largest dairy co-op; the company also purchased and renovated some of the older dairy plants, cutting off the options for competitors who wanted to process milk.

I still like the idea of a cheese factory as an industry, but I'm seeing that I should be using newer mechanical reefers to serve it. At ths point, I can be fairly sure that Leprino's older facility in Lemoore was shipping over what had been the SP Coalinga branch before it was spun off to the San Joaquin Valley Railroad in the early 1990s. This would probably have used 57-foot reefers in PFE paint. I can probably get away with using earlier 50-foot mechanical reefers as well.

Here are some shots of tests to see what I can get away with on 14-9/16 inch Kato Unitrack curves. Here's a bluebox PFE 57-footer in the last PFE scheme. It just barely fits, but it fits.

Here's a Walthers 70-foot cryo reefer. It fits on the curve, but the Plate F clearance won't go through the benchwork thread-the-needle clearances to get to the shelf. Oh, well.

Another shot of the testing. I'm very pleased with how reliable the Unitrack is in cramped space here.