"From the GATX, the Arcticar - General American Transportation Corp.'s cryogenic railcar" -Railway Age, May 1991
Stop and think. How many fast-food chains are there in the U.S.? How many outlets do they have? How many tons of various foods do they prepare and sell, most of those food products arriving frozen?
The volumes are staggering. And much of the product moves by truck.
General American Transportation Corp. aims to change that, and it believes it has the vehicle in the GATX Arcticar, a big cryogenic boxcar introduced last month.
Big? This car is a Plate F car, almost 76 feet over couplers, and within a hair of 17 feet in height. It has about 50% more cubic capacity than a conventional mechanical refrigerator car, at 6,850 cubic feet capacity.
The refrigeration unit has no moving parts, so the problems with equipment failures on conventional mechanical reefers are not problems with the GATX Arcticar.
GATC, the railcar leasing subsidiary of GATX, is looking at markets that include shippers of frozen potatoes, meat, vegetables, poultry, and juice concentrates. Right now, it has a single car, GARX 68000. But an order has been placed with Gunderson for 30 cars, for operation by a producer of frozen potatoes. GATC sees this as just the start of a business that takes it back to its roots.
General American started out in the refrigerator-car business in 1898, in the ice-bunker days. It evolved into a company that now is the largest full-service lessor of tank cars. In the meantime, the old ice-bunker reefers were phased out, replaced by mechanical refrigerator cars, and now here comes General American once again with the cryogenic car.
etc...
Since the reporting marks are GARX 68039 I assume at least a few more were ordered after the initial 30... I had never seen one before this post though.