Frozen food industry

[cfritschle]

Hi Robert,

Heinz acquired the Ore-Ida brand back in the 1960s.  However, when they decided to close Ore-Ida's headquarters in Boise in the late 1990s, one of my wife's cousins who was an Ore-Ida executive, decided he should take an early retirement rather than move out of this area.  I believe he started his career with Ore-Ida at the Ontario plant  And, I don't think the Heinz signs went up at the Ontario plant until after the Boise office was closed.

[rray]

My EX said she has been on the line there for 15 years now, and some of the equipment is 30-40 years old, some newer. When she started they had over 1000 working there, and there are 500-600 doing the same and sometimes more throughput than they originally did. She said there are both a black and a blue locomotive "leased road switchers?" pulling short trains that she sees regularly.

[cfritschle]

She said there are both a black and a blue locomotive "leased road switchers?" pulling short trains that she sees regularly.

I wonder if she is seeing power from the Oregon Eastern Railroad?  They operate what is left of the Burns branch.  Here is a link to the Google Street View from 2012 of some of their locomotives in Vale, OR.  https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9841903,-117.2426285,3a,41.4y,335.77h,90.17t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sGR1-ARVElGYZkm3lNurwsQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DGR1-ARVElGYZkm3lNurwsQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D270.4981%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

Maybe the Oregon Eastern has trackage rights from Cairo Junction to Ontario to interchange with the UP?

[sirenwerks]

I wonder if she is seeing power from the Oregon Eastern Railroad?  They operate what is left of the Burns branch.  Here is a link to the Google Street View from 2012 of some of their locomotives in Vale, OR.  https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9841903,-117.2426285,3a,41.4y,335.77h,90.17t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sGR1-ARVElGYZkm3lNurwsQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DGR1-ARVElGYZkm3lNurwsQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D270.4981%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

Maybe the Oregon Eastern has trackage rights from Cairo Junction to Ontario to interchange with the UP?

There's a great Mexican restaurant on the next parallel street over from the yard.

[WestH]

I have about 10 pictures of the old Terminal Ice & Cold Storage Co in Nampa, ID with refrigerated cars being loaded taken in the 50’s or 60’s, but for some reason I’m not allowed to upload any pictures to this post - I’m happy to email them if someone would like. The facility was/is an ammonia refrigerated facility. Up until about 25 years ago there was a drainage ditch from the engine room that was dammed up and stocked with fish - if the facilities engineer came to work and the fish were floating he knew he had an ammonia leak. Concerning the old Cryo cars - they were originally CO2 cars, but that didn’t last long and they were all converted to regular diesel refrigerated cars (we just bought Cryo-Trans, so I get to play with real rail cars now).

[cfritschle]

I have about 10 pictures of the old Terminal Ice & Cold Storage Co in Nampa, ID with refrigerated cars being loaded taken in the 50’s or 60’s, but for some reason I’m not allowed to upload any pictures to this post - I’m happy to email them if someone would like. The facility was/is an ammonia refrigerated facility. Up until about 25 years ago there was a drainage ditch from the engine room that was dammed up and stocked with fish - if the facilities engineer came to work and the fish were floating he knew he had an ammonia leak. Concerning the old Cryo cars - they were originally CO2 cars, but that didn’t last long and they were all converted to regular diesel refrigerated cars (we just bought Cryo-Trans, so I get to play with real rail cars now).

The drainage ditch was actually part of Indian Creek.  And now that you mention it, I did hear about the fish (I was told they were rainbow trout and they were very large), but I did not know why they had them there.  Thank you for adding to my stroll down memory lane.

Also, I think you will need to have a few more posts before you can add photos.

[rray]

I know why there are large rainbow trout in Indian Creek. I used to have a rental house in Nampa that I sold 3 years ago, and it backed up to Wilson Creek on Powerline Road. About 2 blocks away, there is a trout hatchery. While they were releasing trout in the creek by my house one day I asked about their stocking, and they said they are stocking all the creeks for the free fishing day. They said that a whole truckload of greater than 12" are going to Indian Creek, because many of the trout will survive and grow really large, and spread out from Kuna to Caldwell due to the rapid water flow.

As far as the Terminal Ice & Cold Storage Co in Nampa, I would be very interested in seeing photos of their Ice House and Platform. I remember about 30 years ago, we toured the Nampa yard as part of an NMRA event, and the host on our bus talked about the Ice house and Platform then, pointing out the foundations that were visible then. I'm pretty sure Carter was also on that bus.

[cfritschle]

I know why there are large rainbow trout in Indian Creek. I used to have a rental house in Nampa that I sold 3 years ago, and it backed up to Wilson Creek on Powerline Road. About 2 blocks away, there is a trout hatchery. While they were releasing trout in the creek by my house one day I asked about their stocking, and they said they are stocking all the creeks for the free fishing day. They said that a whole truckload of greater than 12" are going to Indian Creek, because many of the trout will survive and grow really large, and spread out from Kuna to Caldwell due to the rapid water flow.

As far as the Terminal Ice & Cold Storage Co in Nampa, I would be very interested in seeing photos of their Ice House and Platform. I remember about 30 years ago, we toured the Nampa yard as part of an NMRA event, and the host on our bus talked about the Ice house and Platform then, pointing out the foundations that were visible then. I'm pretty sure Carter was also on that bus.

Robert,

Yes, I was on that tour in 1990!  The PFE icing platforms and ice house were on the south side of the yard and just east of the Northside Blvd overpass.  I remember seeing the icing platforms from the overpass in the late 1960s or early 1970s.  After all of the ice reefers were retired, the platforms were torn down, and the ice house building (where they made the blocks of ice) was leased to the Idaho Potato Processors.  I cannot remember what year the ice house was torn down without looking through my photos.

The Terminal Ice & Cold Storage building still exists, and it is now occupied by Americold Logistics (in the upper center of the photo below).



The Nampa Parks Maintenance Department is now where PFE's ice house building was located.  The old Birds Eye plant is now occupied by Rocky Mountain Steel.

[cfritschle]

I tried to "duplicate" the Google view shown above with a 1971 aerial photo showing the PFE ice house and icing platform.  The ice house is at the bottom center of the photo, and the icing platform extends to the left of the ice house parallel to the tracks.  The Terminal Ice & Cold Storage plant is located near the top center of the photo, just below the old Birds Eye plant.



You may have to left click on the photo to open it in a new tab to clearly see the icing platform.  I hope this is not too much thread drift.   

[rray]

Wow! From the photo, it looks like the Icing Platform was almost half the length of the yard and could service 20 cars at a time! That must have been a really neat thing to see back in the day. I wish someone had made a film  of the operation.

[Mike C]