The Meat Industry
In the 1870's a French inventor had perfected a way of refrigerating ships holds with cold dry air, the first commercial use of the system was for a shipment of frozen meat from America to London in 1874. Further batches of frozen meat were then imported from Argentina (1878) and Australia (1879). By the 1880's controlled refrigeration systems in ships holds enabled the transportation of exotic fruits such as bananas and also allowed chilled meat and butter to be brought all the way from Australia and New Zealand. These products and techniques introduced new traffic for the railways and also changed the existing practices. Mechanical cooling was not used on British railway stock, instead vans were insulated to carry chilled products or fitted with ice tanks to carry frozen goods. Ice was collected in winter and stored in underground store houses (some dating back to the 1600's), it was a useful way to store foods and Britain had even been importing from the Northern USA and Norway since the 1840's. Mechanical cooling made ice much more widely available but the underground ice houses remained in use up to about the time of the First World War.
The insulated vans used to carry chilled meat are discussed and illustrated in the section 'Goods Rolling Stock Design - Specialised Rolling Stock'
The SR had a rather distinctive non standard insulated container, with diagonal planked sides, used to carry frozen meat. These Southern Railway `F' type containers were shorter than a B but longer than an A and the design was peculiar to the SR. They were carried on specially converted long wheel base open carriage truck wagons which retained their 'RUCK' coding. This type is not currently available commercially but could be made up using scribed card or plasticard and using a Peco example to copy the end shape. The container is shown in the section on liveries and the wagon is described in the section on Kit Bashing.
A number of meat companies also entered frozen food processing, notably FMC Ltd (chiefly through its Harris subsidiary), Dalgety Ltd (chiefly through Dalgety-Buswell Ltd and Dalgety Frozen Foods Ltd) and Thos Borthwick & Sons Ltd (through Freshbake Foods Ltd).
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