Mechanical Refrigerated Boxcar

The Starfire Engineering team is proud to have recently completed the design of a brand new 64 foot, 286,000 lb. (gross rail load capacity) mechanical refrigerated boxcar to be built by Millennium Rail, Inc. at both their Junction City, KS and Wood River, IL plants. The cars will be used by end customer Tropicana Products, Inc. on their unique unit "Juice" train to carry chilled juice from Florida to distribution centers in Jersey City, New Jersey and Cincinnati, Ohio. Each new car has the capacity to carry about 20,000 gallons of packaged juice.

These new cars will accommodate the growth of Tropicana's juice products, and replace their gradually aging fleet of orange railcars. Millennium will build 135 total cars for this initial order: 90 at Junction City and 45 at Wood River. Delivery of the completed cars to Tropicana began in late March, 2000 and the project is expected to be completed by Mid 2001.

The cars are being manufactured with 15" end of car cushioning, steel superstructures, steel plug doors, steel ends, welded steel roofs, aluminum free flow floors and a Holland Company manufactured restraint system. Unlike the older, more conventional refrigerated boxcars, which had the refrigeration unit actually built into the end of the car, thereby allowing for limited access, the new cars have a removable end mounted refrigeration unit which improves access for servicing or replacement.

These unusual cars are among a very few being built in the railroad industry today. The age of the current, conventional refrigerated boxcar fleet, spread out among the railroads and private owners, is more than twenty five-plus years, making these new cars some of the first built of a new generation of refrigerated boxcars.