Strawberry Specials

[benjamintickell53]

From Yahoo Mopac group, July 2015

From Railway Age – April 14, 1934…. Special overnight freight service has been arranged by the Missouri Pacific to handle the crop of Arkansas White River Valley strawberries this year. Car lots of berries loaded in the so-called Judsonia district, which includes Cabot, Ward, Beebe, McRae, Higginson, Searcy, Kensett, Bald knob, Russell, Bradvord and Newport, in addition to Judsonia, will leave those places between 7 and 10pm each night and arrive at St. Louis at 6 and 7 the following morning. The total crop in the Judsonia district is estimated at 1,450 carloads. In addition about 400 carloads will be produced in the Arkansas River valley between Little Rock and Van Buren, and about 300 carloads in the White River valley between Newport and Carthage MO.

Not mentioned in Railway Age, but from discussions with Mike Adams and others in years past, special switch jobs were in place to pull the cars each evening after loading, and most of the time the loads went north in express reefers on passenger trains or passenger extras. Supposedly the Sunshine was occasionally stopped to quickly add a few cars to head end, if loading wasn’t finished by the time the earlier trains departed.
Bill Pollard

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Quite amazing! A small piece of MoPac history rarely discussed. We forget that strawberries were once a seasonal crop. The berries were picked and rushed to markets in the east. It was for this service that MoPac maintained a large fleet of express reefers, cars that in other seasons probably saw “dry” shipments of express. From what I can recall from drawings I have seen, the berry sheds usually could only hold 4 to 5 cars, but that’s still 200 to 250 feet.

Arkansas strawberry production was hit with labor shortages (especially during WWII), and California, with it’s warmer weather, eventually eclipsed the”Judsonia Berry”.
Dick Ryker

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This is great. I have about 10 express reefers I got just because I liked them, used to see them on the IC hauling Louisiana strawberries. Now I have an MP reason to run them on my layout.
Pat Flory

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Then the question would be,were the express reefers ever spotted at produce distributor’s docks?
Charles Weston

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Another Mike Adams tidbit is that he said any reefers that carried fish were culled before being used in strawberry service for obvious reasons.
Jerry Michels

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From what research I have done, it is unlikely many express reefers were used in strawberry service. I have two photos of specials with Wells Fargo Express reefers loaded with peaches from Prescott, but all shots at the strawberry co-ops show standard ART reefers of the time being loaded. If you consider the sheer number of loads shipped daily from the area, MoPac would not have had enough Express refrigerator cars to handle the shipments.

Also, Missouri Pacific (or St.LIM&S) was not the contracted party with the co-ops to provide the cars. American Refrigerator Transit Co was their contracted supplier. That was why A.R.T. was formed by the Missouri Pacific Railway (MPRY), the St. Louis Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad (StLIM&S) and Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway (WStL&P). To handle perishable freight on all three lines.

As with everything, one can never say never, so there certainly would have been special shipments in Express Refrigerator cars, but I believe that would have been the exception, not the rule. But it does make a good old time railroading story.
Gene Semon

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Mike Adams wrote what I consider to be the definitive article on strawberry specials, appearing in the July 1983 issue of the Arkansas Railroader, page 16, [attached below]. In that article, Mike states that MP in April started accepting express reefers from all connections, with the goal of having 500 or more on hand by May 1. Express reefers, like freight cars, moved in interchange service, so MP was by no means limited to the number of passenger express reefers in their own fleet.

Mike indicated that during his observation period, stretching from the late 1930s into the mid-1950s, strawberry movements were the exclusive domain of express reefers, Railway Express Agency, etc. He also states that the Sunshine was “never” delayed, for berries or anything else. I recall another strawberry story from that period, perhaps written by MoP conductor W.T. “Bill” Church, which describes an episode where the Sunshine was stopped for a load of berries.

And, while photos of the berry loading sheds in operation are rare, at least one photo shows wooden ART reefers spotted, thus validating the use of those cars, but perhaps earlier than the time period covered by Mike Adams. Additional information on both Railway Express and American Refrigerator Transit shipment of strawberries would be welcomed.
Bill Pollard

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