Huntingdon Iced The Eastbound Trains

West of Fifteenth and Penn streets in Huntingdon, beside the railroad, the Boyle Ice Company of Chicago built a plant in 1925 to ice refrigerated rail cars. It serviced every eastbound train on the Pennsylvania Railroad, because Huntingdon was the last icing station before the eastern markets.

Three deep wells fed the freezing room, where an ammonia and brine process made ice in 400-pound blocks. Overhead cranes plunged the cans in water to free the blocks and carried them to storage at 28 degrees. A chain conveyor ran the ice through a tunnel under one track and up a steep incline to an elevated steel platform over the siding.

Depending on the weather and the cargo, a refrigerated car needed ice about every twelve hours. Fruit and vegetables rode on block ice, and meat cars took crushed ice and salt to stay colder. The plant iced fifteen cars in a "pull," three minutes to a car, and a crew might finish a fifty or sixty car train in an hour. John States, who worked there forty-three years, recalled icing 125-car trains carrying nothing but California grapes bound for New York City.

The plant ran twenty-four hours a day with eight to ten men a shift, and the men unloaded 50-ton salt cars with scoop shovels. In the Depression they worked twelve-hour shifts and were paid for nine.

Business slacked off as automatic refrigeration and trucks competed for it. To cut expenses the men gave up all benefits and vacations and stayed on call around the clock, coming in whenever Altoona sent word that a train was on its way. A 1991 National Park Service inventory of the county's industrial sites says that irregular schedule made it easier for them to cope when the plant closed for good in 1972. When that survey was made, the building stood abandoned and deteriorating.

Checked 2026-10-31 · County histories and primary sources, read in full

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