FGEX 55932 is a 40 foot steel ice refrigerator car built in December 1927. It was rebuilt in 1950. It was owned by Fruit Growers Express and eventually donated to the museum by Albers Feed Company in Reno.
Fruit Growers Express (FGE) was a railroad refrigerator car leasing company that began as a produce-hauling subsidiary of Armour and Company's private refrigerator car line. Its customers complained they were overcharged and in 1919 the Federal Trade Commission ordered the company's sale for anti-trust reasons.
Incorporated on March 18, 1920 the firm took possession of 4,280 pieces of rolling stock, repairs shops at Alexandria, Virginia and Jacksonville, Florida, and numerous ice plants and other facilities scattered throughout the East Coast on May 1. By year's end, the Chicago and Eastern Illinois, New Haven, and Norfolk and Western railroads became major stockholders.
In order to compete with the Pacific Fruit Express and Santa Fe Refrigerator Despatch in the west, FGE and the Great Northern Railway formed the Western Fruit Express (WFE) on July 18, 1923, a move that added 3,000 cars to the equipment pool. By 1926, FGE had expanded its service into the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest through the WFE and the Burlington Refrigerator Express (BREX), its other partly owned subsidiary.[1]
Fruit Growers Express is now controlled by the CSX Corporation.
[1] wikipedia.org (2005). WIKIPEDIA. In Fruit Growers Express. Retrieved April 27, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_Growers_Express
