The Tomato Car

The Stock Cars That Hauled The Fruit

By Charles Blardone, Jr.

Official PRR photo

Starting in the mid-1930's and continuing up until the early 1950's, The PRR employed specially-equipped 40 ft. K8 stock cars as ventilated box cars for the seasonal shipment of red, ripe tomatoes from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to Campbell Soup Co., Camden, New Jersey for processing into tomato soup and tomato juice.

Campbell's processing plant in Camden, New Jersey routinely produced a full year's inventory of tomato soup and tomato juice between late July and mid-September of the year, when the tomato crop ripened. During this two-month period, the Camden plant received shipments of red, ripe tomatoes in baskets from South Jersey growers in wagons and trucks and from Delmarva peninsula growers in ships. Since the Jersey and Delmarva crops alone would not suffice to meet demand, rail shipments were also made from growers in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Lancaster County tomato growers, under contract to Campbell Soup, trucked their tomatoes to grading platforms at Lancaster and Lebanon. There, the USDA graded the tomatoes for quality (1st, 2nd, culls). The tomatoes were then manually loaded into PRR stock cars for shipment east. These stock car movements occurred seven days a week during the July-September tomato harvest. Stock cars were moved in blocks of 30 - 40 cars from Lancaster over the PRR to West Philadelphia, with a local transfer across the Del-Air Bridge to Camden. Cars from Lebanon were routed via the Reading Railroad to Port Richmond, then across the Delaware River on car float.

Each stock car carried 1,000 baskets of tomatoes. Tomatoes were packed so that they did not come above the edge of the basket. Baskets were loaded in several different orientations, one common method being in rows of seven baskets crosswise in the car. Weight was kept off the lower baskets by supporting them with intermediate floors. Each basket had a capacity of 5/8 bushel, was 14 3/4" in diameter at the top and 13" high. With 60 bushels equaling one ton of tomatoes, each basket weighed approximately 35 lbs. No spacers were used to keep the baskets from moving during buffing because they they were packed one against the other from end to end of the car. Cars were sprayed with hydrated lime to control fruit flies before going into service by the PRR and by the Campbell Company while in service.

No time could be lost in shipment, as the tomatoes were picked red and ripe. Tomatoes were loaded and shipped the first day and had to be unloaded at Camden for immediate processing the following day. The Camden plant handled about 200 freight cars per day. Campbell workers manually unloaded the baskets of tomatoes from the stock cars and placed them onto conveyors equipped with basket hangers; the conveyors took the tomatoes into the plant for processing.

Up until 1948, Campbell had two processing plants. The Camden plant supplied finished cartons of cans of tomatoes and other foodstuffs to the US east of the Mississippi River plus the West Coast. The Chicago plant supplied the area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Long-haul shipment of finished foodstuffs from Camden was handled in several ways. During the summer months, goods were shipped by rail in box cars to Eastern US destinations. In wintertime, to protect goods from freezing, goods were shipped in refrigerator cars to Eastern US destinations. Most West Coast shipments were routed to Philadelphia by car float, then via American Steamship Lines through the Panama Canal. When Campbell's Sacramento plant began operation in 1948, West Coast shipments from Camden were discontinued.

Two factors combined to curtail the use of stock cars in tomato service at Campbell's. First, the opening of the Sacramento plant in 1948 reduced the requirements for tomatoes at the Camden plant, resulting in less tomatoes being purchased from Lancaster County. Second, in the decade following the end of World War II, motor freight became much more available and economical. As a result, growers in Lancaster County began trucking their harvest to Camden similar to their South Jersey counterparts.

As a footnote to this story on K8's, John Harris, former PRR car inspector related that the brakes on stock cars were chronically out of adjustment. It seems no one wanted to climb under them due to the aroma and large amounts of disgusting matter that coated everything. Perhaps the K8's assigned to Campbell shipments fared better.