Refrigerated car (railroad)
A refrigerated wagon is a rail freight wagon with thermal insulation, the loading space of which is made up of a box enclosed by the side walls and the roof.
According to the presence and type of cooling equipment, they are divided into:
- Thermal insulation car without cooling device
- Refrigerated trucks with cooling containers, the refrigerant is usually water or dry ice
- Machine refrigerated trucks with their own refrigeration units
history
The first wagons were cooled with water ice that was obtained in special basins or from lakes in winter. In the winter of 1877, on behalf of the Chicago industrialist and meat producer Gustavus Swift , it was possible for the first time to develop efficiently cooling railcars. The circulation of the air ensures that the air cooled by the ice cools the entire wagon. This system became the basis of the success of Union Stock Yards , Chicago's slaughterhouses . The refrigerated wagon made it possible for the first time to transport the meat of the slaughtered animals across the United States. Machine-made ice was later used - and quickly switched to other forms of cooling : the easiest way was to replace the water ice with dry ice . With reliable combustion engines came Machines Kühlwagen on. There are also refrigerated vehicles whose cooling capacity is generated by evaporating a liquid gas .
Temperature regulation and intended use
Thermal insulation wagons, i.e. refrigerated wagons with insulation but without coolant, are used in the temperature range of +4 ° C to +16 ° C, where a constant internal temperature is desired. They are used to transport dairy products, canned goods or fruits. Refrigerated trucks for transporting bananas have a gas evaporator and thus reach an internal temperature of +14.4 ° C.
Refrigerated vans with refrigerated containers have the problem of inaccurate refrigeration temperature , as the cold is only distributed by air circulation . The coolant used, water or dry ice , guarantees a temperature of +4 ° C to −18 ° C. They are used for the transport of meat , beer or sea fish . Freezer trucks maintain a temperature of −10 ° C or −20 ° C and are used to transport frozen food .
Machine refrigerated trucks have cooling units with which a target temperature can be specified; this can be between +20 ° C and −30 ° C. They are therefore suitable for deep-frozen transport over long distances. Although machine refrigerated trucks are expensive to maintain and operate, they have the advantage over other types of refrigerated trucks that they maintain the specified temperature during the entire transport, which is of great importance for maintaining the cold chain when transporting food . Whole refrigerated trains consisting of a machine car, an escort car and several refrigerated cars are used in long-haul transport in the former Eastern Bloc countries .
Most food transports have now been shifted to the road due to shorter transport times or are handled with refrigerated containers . The refrigerated vehicle fleet of the railway companies has therefore shrunk significantly. Most of the refrigerated trucks were looked after by Intercontainer-Interfrigo until 2010 . You can easily distinguish these refrigerated cars from the outside: White cars are normal refrigerated cars, blue cars with white vertical stripes are machine refrigerated cars.
Identification and classification
According to UIC , refrigerated wagons are always among the special design freight wagons in Europe. All freight wagons within the UIC railway companies engaged in international traffic shall be consistent with single -class mark and a single car number be marked. All refrigerated vehicles are therefore marked with the generic letter "I".
For goods wagons with temperature influence, the generic letter "I" means that they have thermal insulation of class IN, have air circulation through a wind motor, are equipped with floor grids and ice boxes of at least 3.5 m³ or more. This description applies to the simplest version of a refrigerated truck, deviations from this version are indicated by code letters . Before this UIC classification was introduced, refrigerated cars in Germany were marked with the generic mark “Gk”, at the end of 1942 with the generic mark “T” and four-axle refrigerated wagons with the generic mark “GGk”, plus any ancillary generic marks.
In order to simplify loading and unloading, thermally insulated sliding wall wagons with refrigeration machines were built for the temperature range from 0 ° C to +20 ° C. These are marked with an "H" as covered freight wagons of the special design (types Hbbills-u from Rail Cargo Austria and Hbbills-uy from SBB Cargo ).
Standard freight wagon UIC
Many refrigerator cars were built according to the guidelines of the UIC . The UIC began in the 1950s with the standardization of the construction of freight cars; the result of this standardization led to the standardized freight cars. The types of freight wagons developed by the UIC are reproduced in the UIC leaflet. Since refrigerated wagons are among the special design freight wagons, they are built as standard freight wagons or UIC standard freight wagons in accordance with UIC leaflet 571-3. The main dimensions of the two-axle refrigerated wagons match those of the Gbs type boxcar.
| UIC 571-3: Special design freight wagons | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| design type | two-axle refrigerator car | four-axle refrigerator car | ||
| Standard car | F ährbootwagen | 1st variant | 2nd variant | |
| Class 1) | Ibbs / Ibbgs | Ib f s / Ib f gs | Ias / Iags | |
| Wheelbase | 8.0 m | - | ||
| Pivot spacing | - | 15.8 m | 16.8 m | |
| Length over buffers | 14.02 m | 21.04 m | 22.24 m | |
| Loading length, at least 1) | 10.5 m / 11.0 m | 16.4 m / 16.8 m | 17.8 m / 18.0 m | |
| Loading area, approx. 1) | 27 m² / 28 m² | 23 m² / 24 m² | 42 m² / 43 m² | 45 m² / 46 m² |
| Net weight, max. 1) | 15.5 t / 18.5 t | 31.0 t / 35.0 t | 32.0 t / 36.0 t | |
| Door height | 1.9 m | |||
| Door width | 2.7 m | |||
1) Cooling and heat protection wagons / machine cooling wagons
Literature and Sources
- Helmut Behrends, Wolfgang Hensel, Gerhard Wiedau: Goods wagon archive. Volume 2: Deutsche Bundesbahn and Deutsche Reichsbahn. Transpress VEB Verlag for Transport, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-344-00330-5 ( Railway Vehicle Archive 7, 2).
- Stefan Carstens: Freight wagons. Volume 2: Stefan Carstens, Hans Ulrich Diener: Covered wagons - special designs. Revised, updated and expanded new edition of the first edition from 1989. MIBA-Verlag, Nuremberg 2000, ISBN 3-89610-251-6 .
- Stefan Carstens: The DB AG freight cars. Numbers, facts, developments, photos. MIBA-Verlag, Nuremberg 1998, ISBN 3-86046-030-7 .
- Wolfgang Diener: Painting and designation of freight cars. The external appearance of German freight cars from 1864 to today. Publishing house Dr. Bernhard Abend, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-926243-11-2 .
Web links
- Information on Intercontainer / Interfrigo wagons
- Refrigerator car from Waggonbau Dessau
- World Geographic Channel: The Largest Rail Yards In The World - Freight Trains History youtube.com, Video 42:49 min, A&E Television Networks, 2006, June 9, 2016, accessed February 6, 2017. (English) - Filling refrigerated wagons with Blocks of ice pushed by poles over slides (35: 00–35: 40). "Box cars as rolling ice boxes, ice-reefers", before diesel cooling units were introduced from 1950 onwards.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The invention of the battle plan ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - The history of the Union Stock Yards at brand eins
- ↑ Operating instructions for the insulated sliding wall wagon for the fresh service , railcargowagon.at
