Ontario Northland Railroad (ONR) uses these heaters to keep their cargoes “unfrozen.”
“Solara delivers a full 30,000 Btuh (8,792 watts) of heat at -20°F (-29°C) ambient”
Am I reading this right? This is 52°F below freezing. What am I missing? I realize the Frozen North can get really cold, but this can’t be much help!
Steve;
They aren’t trying to cook anything in that insulated box car. They are just trying to prevent anything in it from freezing. -30C is common on the ONR route to Moosonee, so they have to think of keeping a lot of the goods they transport, from freezing.
That box car, and I think they have a few of them, is used for a lot of small shipments, like food and drink. It is treated like the old LTCL shipping that the railroads used to do, all over the continent.
There are no roads up to James Bay, so it’s either ship by boat, through Hudson Bay, by air at great expense, or by rail, which is much less expensive. Almost all passenger trains on the ONR have one of these cars on them, from Cochrane, up to Moosonee. A lot of the residents up there and along the line, order their groceries from as far South as North Bay, or Ottawa, and have them shipped up in these cars.
Steve,
In the days of ice reefers many were used for the same purpose in the US without heaters, just the insulation. Much better than an old boxcar riddled with holes and cracks and devoid of insulation. What ONR is doing is just an improved answer to an old problem.
An old friend of mine who used to load such cars told of one guy that got accidentally locked inside a refrigerator car (no ice) and took a ride clear to Truckee in the Sierras from Stockton area in mid winter. Some frantic calls got him rescued there and he was a bit cooled off but okay otherwise. If the car hadn’t been insulated he probably wouldn’t have made it.
Steve-
“Solara delivers a full 30,000 Btuh (8,792 watts) of heat at -20°F (-29°C) ambient”
I think that means that it delivers 30,000 Btuh of heat even when the ambient temperature is -20°, and not that the heat it delivers measures -20°
Charles, thanks, I guess that is what I was missing. It didn’t make sense to me to input “heat” at -29C.
That pic reminded me how much I love the look of weathered, steel freight cars! I may have to “imagineer” some for my NG layout one of these days.
Actually they would sometimes mount wood or coal stoves in reefers in the winter up north ways…
I wonder if they could devise a heat pump that could do double duty. Remove heat is summer and add it in winter?
Steve -
Yes, but heat pumps become very inefficient, or don’t work at all in very cold ambient temps. We use heat pumps in one of our apartment buildings, but needed to include supplemental electric heat for when it gets very cold.
Jon