At one point Mid-Continent was running the Waukesha system on Soo 2017 when they were using it in dinner train service, but that was a good ten years ago, and I don't knoe if it is still viable.

I can't find my reference, but I seem to recall that the Ice capacity of a Pullman car with ice activated a/c was 1500 pounds of ice, and consumption was on the order of 400 pounds per day. That's a lot of ice, and since the system relies on a steady supply of melt water for cooling, I'm not sure how well the system would cool with only a partial charge.

Found a web article about car air conditioning and electrical issues:

http://utahrails.net/pass/dynamos-hep.php

Ice-activated systems are discussed about halfway down the article:

Ice blocks? Not hardly. At least not around east central Illinois. We dug into that a few years back. Biggest thing we could easily get was 12" cubes. Easier to handle maybe, but would take a bunch of them. I was told by one firm I could still get the 12" x 24" x 36" 350 lb blocks, but they were $150 ea., or $2400 to fill the bunker. For only about 8 hours of cooling, that's not happening! They said they were expensive because only buyers of those are ice sculptors.

Our experience with ice was based on the need to cool Wabash Office Car #6 during a summer day so the carpet installers could work and not keel over from heat exhaustion in the oven the car would be. Due to the rusted out ice bunker, we resorted to a plastic 55 gallon drum outside the car, and added some three way valves to the chilled water circulation system. After confirming there were no leaks in the system inside the car, (actually, after fixing the one we found...) we used an external pump to move the chilled water from the drum to the car's existing plumbing up to the heat exchanger. There, similar to refrigerant-based systems, air is forced over the coils of the heat exchanger and delivered to the car's duct system. The now warmed water returned to the drum and was sprayed over the ice in the drum. Consumption was about 560 lbs of ice per hour, and that was with the car in the shade.

Regarding Waukesha Ice Engines... I'll make anyone who wants one a hell of a deal. Have several stacked up in the back lot. You can set it up next to your house and run your air conditioning with it-plumb it up to a big tank of propane from your local supplier. The boat people call Waukesha engines "Walk a-shores", if that gives you any insight. We did use one on one car. The biggest issue, aside from regularly have to fool with something on the engine or compressor end of the machine, was handling the fuel. The bottles are very heavy - about 300 lbs full, and there are four bottles on this car. One bottle is generally good for about 8 hours of service.

The other issue, as noted earlier in this thread, we don't go fast enough to drive the axle driven generator to make the required electrical power to run the evaporator or the vapor panel, which controls the ice engine. So where does THAT come from? You've got three choices, batteries, which someone has to purchase (at about 7K/set,) maintain, charge and otherwise look after. Don't forget about charging occasionally in the off season. And don't talk to me about solar charging in the off season. Doesn't work when the car is stored inside a building. To top it off, I have my doubts a fully charged set would make it through an 8 hour day without giving up the ghost, but have not done the math to see. The next option is some form of HEP, which is the route we took, with each car getting transformers and rectifiers to make the required DC voltage. If you've got that available, why struggle to maintain something that requires yet another fuel, and all the TLC Waukesha's demand? The third option is using - wait for it - yet another WAUKESHA, these called Enginators, to make the DC power. If I'm already fighting with maintaining one Waukesha engine, why not two?!? Now I've got even more bottles of propane to deal with! YAY! Hopefully, you can sense the sarcasm... :-)

Yes, it is/was neat to see all that working, and getting it to that point was certainly a learning experience. But after that, it turns into a battle of parts availability and time, neither of which are easily available. I would say, for working equipment in service, you're far better off replacing Ice Engine type systems with a railcar design mechanical system. Your patrons will thank you, as their ride will much more likely remain comfortable. For equipment that won't be in train service, at least not occupied service, we'll leave existing Waukesha's in place. And in case of cars equipped with same being restored for service, we're building a new system inside the Waukesha frame, so it looks the same from the exterior, but will hopefully be a more reliable system otherwise. It includes a rebuilt semi-hermetic compressor, new condensing coils that fit the same envelope as the originals, but of higher capacity, and sundry new controls built into the original Waukesha control box. Now, if someone wants to come up with a sound system and record a waukesha starting, running a while, then dying, then cranking until the crank limit switch trips, lets talk! :-)

Hmmmm... Do I detect an ever so slight note of disdain for Waukesha engines? :>)

Just a topical photo link

The Nevada State Railroad Museum has Ice activated AC on our 1899 Wagner private car, Ellsmere. It loads from the roof. The Western Railroad Museum in Rio Vista California has a car with ice AC that also loads from the roof...

The standard large block of ice is 300lbs, 1'x2'x3'... It is available anywhere that they are making ice sculptures...

Randy

To if you can use chest freezers to make the ice-NO. Way ,waaay too slow.

To how much ice, somewhat easy to estimate. A/C units are rated in 'tons' which is tons of ice. So a 5 ton A/C unit running non stop is the same cooling as 5 tons of ice. So the above usage of 500+ pounds of ice an hour is probably spot on, His usage would be 7 tons of cooling per day. Keep in mind the 'quality' of your ice would matter a lot-if you let your ice get to 32 degrees, it may still be ice but the 'btu's' are leaking out. You would want your ice to be uniformly less then 32 degrees to ensure all the BTU's possible are available. Cube ice straight out of most standard ice machines would be about the worst possible ice.

OK, who can name the last ice cooled coach in scheduled service?

Not sure who was last, but Canadian National Railways operated a fleet of ice air conditioned coaches until the end of its passenger mandate. When CN expanded passenger service in the 1970s, it had to pull out all the stops with equipment, and had everything from old open section sleepers used as coaches, RDCs, Turbos, LRCs, ex-Reading Crusader, Tempo, GO Transit bi-levels, Ontario Northland, assorted steel cars, and a few stainless steel gems.
The balloon top cars with ice ac were in the 5200 and 5300 number series and had vestibules at each end. They saw regular main line service and were used in 6060 steam excursions. They were well maintained and rode like a dream on the 3-axle trucks. A few were taken into VIA Rail stock but could not have seen much use.
http://saskrailmuseum.org/wp-content/up ... -Final.pdf

Guys, I've been wondering something. What about taking one of these ice cooled or steam ejector AC coaches and just slightly modify it? Instead of using ice blocks why not take a York compressor and make a water chilled AC system. The cold water would be pumped through the AC system to transmit the cold. The York 210 is still used in some over the road trucks so supplies are available of them. They do take a ton of driving power so would need a good size universal brushed motor that could run on the coaches DC system. I know there is a lot of disdain for using A/C grade R290 as a refrigerant but there would be very little of it actually in the whole system. Could use R134a I suppose with proper oil change of the compressor oil.

These compressors came about in the 1950's and I've always felt they would have been the next logical choice to replace ice block and some steam ejector AC systems using the chilled water AC method outlined above. They came about around the same time as the spicer drive system was introduced for electrical generation on passenger cars. An interesting piece of engineering in it's own right.

I'd say at minimum for a AC induction motor it would take 7.5HP to 10HP maybe even more. Possibly up to 20HP. The old repulsion start induction motors would be ideal as they develop more starting torque than any of today's capacitor start motors and would look period correct. They still can be found and usually don't take alot of work to recondition them.

http://www.240.se/litteratur/york.pdf

http://www.pirate4x4.com/tech/billavista/PDFs/New%20Jun%202003/York%20Compressor%20service%20manual.pdf

http://www.rparts.com/documents/010-0600-cci_section1.pdf

Industrial York water chiller just for demostration. https://www.johnsoncontrols.com/-/media/jci/be/united-states/hvac-equipment/chillers/files/be_vsd_history.pdf

A very crude home made version of what I am thinking about adapting to a Pullman coach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViO3Xky3nYE

Version 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIlJvw9mU44

Just got to scale it properly to cool the water tank in place of the ice or steam ejector.

The system wont freeze you out like a modern AC system would but rather keep you comfortable. As I understand it the steam ejector systems did not get super cold but ran in the 50 degree range on a good day.

Robert

Our plans for our "ice activated" car is to keep it in a air conditioned building generally, as a static displayed piece, but rehabilitating the ice system (seal tank, clean and confirm drains are working, repair fans and other systems,) then when it is rarely used, add ice as needed...

I note that air conditioning is a "must" much of the summer... We see official temperatures of 114-115... the official temperature taken 4' off the ground, in a shaded place with no reflected light... so real temperatures are seen as high as 129.... Yes, its warm in Southern Nevada...

We expect that the ice system will make the car comfortable for the occasional use... That occasional use will be largely ceremonial, not revenue driven... The car is being interpreted as a private/business car... an example of first class travel in a time now past. Being near Las Vegas where first class travel is well understood, it makes the car relevant for our site.

So far we have found little documentation on "ice activated" air conditioning... and what we find doesn't match what we are finding on our car.

The beauty of the ice AC is its simplicity... and independence from other train resources. We will likely rune a HEP line through the car with a low average transformer to power this cars power system... by the way, this car does not appear to have been equipped with axle powered generators...

Randy

Do you have a mechanical reefer car? (engine powered kind). Could make a stack of molds for the ice and then when you need the ice, fire up the reefer car for a couple days and let it freeze them up. Can also plug most of them into 3 phase power so you don't have to run the engine. You could certainly adjust the size of the ice blocks for your situation. Make them smaller so you can handle them, or make them bigger if you can use a forklift to load them in and it's convenient.

My mention of chest freezers to make ice was assuming the blocks would freeze over the course of an entire week giving a few hours of cooling come the weekend.

An article about the Blue Water Chapter, NRHS in Michigan in August 1992 TRAINS discusses the difficulties of maintaining a coach fleet and mentions having some ice-activated cars for which ice would have to be ordered if there is even a slight chance of it getting warm. It also said they were converting to diesel units adapted from trucks.

I believe this is a Waukesha Ice Engine and Enginator on IC 1906 @ Monticello.

To respond to a few points in this thread -

As for the last cars in service to use steam ejector A/C - I presume that would be on the Southern RR, when they ended their passenger service in 1979 - and I think a few of their coaches in the 800 series operated on Amtrak for a few years after then. As to if the Southern coaches still used steam-ejector air in the early NS excursion days - I don't know, they may have. Or, possibly a few ex-Santa Fe cars remained with steam a/c until the pre-Heritage Fleet was retired in roughly 1983.

The last use of ice-activated A/C as far as I know was on VIA, in their 5200- and 5300-series ex-CN coaches. The Bluewater Michigan NRHS did have two of these coaches - 5302 and 5307 - which retained ice-activated a/c. This system worked fine, but the cars had to be retired in roughly 1995 due to poor body condition. If Bluewater could ever restore these cars we would have kept the ice a/c in at least one of them. As I recall, Bluewater had no problem finding commercial ice vendors to supply the cars, and the ice used wasn't the 300-pound blocks from the ice-house age, but something smaller. Bluewater ultimately had to thin out their collection, and these cars were sold to a gentleman in Regina who collected a large quantity of equipment about a decade ago, then did nothing with it - so I am not sure where these cars wound up. A Bluewater member owned 5226 and 5228 from this series, and put in a Stadco modern a/c system in the early 1990s in them.

Chris J.

Still looking for a pass car steam ejector A/C unit

Matt Janssen
mjanssen@vaporlocomotive.com