The Antique Ice Tool Museum in West Chester added a railcar to its historic assets. The car once transported produce from coast to coast, using blocks of ice in the days before more modern refrigeration technologies, writes Bill Rettew for the Daily Local News.

Peter and Joann Stack, the museum’s owners, purchased the 40-ton, ice-refrigerated Pacific Fruit Express railcar. Tractor-trailers transported the car from Indiana last week, and once on site, a crane lifted it into place.

Ice-refrigerated railcars routinely carried produce, dairy, meat, seafood, and beer from the 1860s into the 1960s. The products remained fresh thanks to natural ice that was continually loaded into railcars at stations across the country. Commercial- and consumer-based rail usage was, at one time, a staple throughout Chester County.

The museum’s owners had been looking for the perfect ice-refrigerated railcar for more than a decade. The pair established Brandywine Ice Company in 1975 and opened the museum in 2012.

“It’s the only museum like this in the United States,” said Peter Stack.

Read more about the Antique Ice Tool Museum in the Daily Local News.