KNOTT’S PATENT REFRIGERATING RAILWAY CAR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 956, 13 August 1880, Page 3

KNOTT’S PATENT REFRIGERATING RAILWAY CAR.

(Town - and Country Journal.) The difficult question as to tho practicability of conveying dead meat in a fresh and wholesome condition for long distances has for some considerable time engaged public attention, and any solution of the difficulty will he appreciated an 1 welcomed by all classes of society. The subj -ct is of vital importance to this colony, as it will not only be the means of supplying our large towns daily with prime country fed beef, poultry, game, &c., at a low level price, but it will open out fresh markets abroad and become one of our richest and moat important export trades. At the Royal Agricultural Society show, held at Kilburn, near London, last year, a special prize of LSO and a gold medal were offered by the Lord Mayor of London and the Mansion House committee, for the best means of conveying perishable goods, meat, poultry, &0., by railway, a journey of 500 miles, the truck to retain ..it’s content's after the journey, at a temperature not exceeding 40 degrees Fahrenheit, for six days. Two waggons were in the competition, one fitted with Knott’spatent dry air refiigerator, and exhibited by the Swansea Waggon &0., of Glamorgan ; and the other exhibited by an American gentleman Colonel W. D’Alton Mann, fitted with his own patent process for preserving the contents of the truck by clear dry cold air. Nine days before, in both of those waggons, had been placed sides of beef, veal, carcasses of pork, mutton, lamb, and fowls, ducks, hares, and rabbits. The waggons were sent from Loudon to Holyhead and back, and observations were made of the temperature every two hours by thermometers introduced through tubes. On- opening Mann’s van there were found, indications of mould and decay on the beef and pork, and tho thermometers registered an average temperature of 40 37 degrees. On opening the Swansea waggon, the whole of the meat poultry, and game was as sweet and sound and firm, and tho surface as dry as desirable, and the average temperature was 39 3 degrees. There was no doubt, therefore, in the minds of the judges, of tho superiority in condition and market valuo of the contents of tho van of the Swansea

Waggon Company, and they awarded both the prize and the medal to Knott’s system. Since then the cars have become general in use on all the principal railway lines of Great Britain.

The first waggon sent to this colony was unshipped from the Benares, a day or two ago, and is now being fitted up at the Uedfern railway station fur use on the Government railways.