Rail car refrigeration...
Last night the local PBS station (KQED) aired "East of Eden", the Steinbeck classic with an equally classic James Dean in his last movie role. In the plot Dean's character, Cal, has a father who had a vision of shipping lettuce from the Salinas Valley, where they had a farm, across the country in refrigerated rail cars. Only problem was, their way of refrigerating the cars depended on blocks of ice. Well, their first shipment got delayed in the mountains and everything melted; lettuce ruined. I guess refrigeration units of the day were too bulky to put on trains.