Freight Cars

GATX 1954 Swift Refrigerator Line (SRLX) 15030
GATX 1954
Swift Refrigerator Line (SRLX) 15030
Description:RAM Steel Reefer

Equipment Information

Swift 15030 is an all-steel refrigerated boxcar, or “reefer,” built to transport meat and animal carcasses that required refrigeration. It is the museum’s only example of a brine reefer: unlike better-known ice reefers, which used large blocks of ice in “bunkers” at each end to cool the car’s contents, brine reefers used cooling tanks at each end. These were loaded, or “charged,” with a mixture of crushed ice and rock salt which created a subfreezing slush that kept the car’s interior cool. It was railroad cars like this that enabled Chicago, with its huge stockyards complex on the south side, to become the fabled “hog butcher to the world.”

Builder: General American Transportation
Year Built: 1954
Length: 39ft
Width: 10ft 2in
Height: 13ft 10in
Weight: 59400 lbs
Brakes: AB
Trucks: Barber
Description: RAM Steel Reefer
Arrived: 1969
Condition: Complete / unrestored / not operational

Photo gallery

Click to return to Freight Car roster
Click to return to main roster page