Before Refrigeration how was ice sawn/stored/mined ?

People believe you created this thread for the purpose of trolling and to increase your post count because as you have shown you could have google the subject first and then asked specific questions related to railroads and or other forms of transportation. Added to that your rather snippy responses when someone took the time to give you an answer. That sort of behavior only leads to people ignoring you all together. You seem to be smart and knowledgeable about many things so just try to return the respect to others that you want to receive.

William
 
I can personally attest as to how long ice can stay frozen without insulation during summer. New Years Day 2020 (mid summer here in Oz) where we were holidaying was cut off from road access and electric power by the recent catastrophic bush-fires we experienced. At midday we discovered that the local Fisherman's Co-op was giving away its shaved ice to any and all as they had no power to keep it and their fish cold. We grabbed several large containers full to help keep our food perishables cold. By the time we got back to our residence the power had been restored and our refrigeration was again working. We held onto the ice just in case there was another power failure.

By late afternoon we were assured that the power was back on permanently. Thinking that the melting ice would eventually cause a flood in the laundry where I had stored it, I dumped it outside on the back lawn believing that it would not last long. The minimum temperature that night was in the low 20s (C).

The next morning I discovered that most of the ice was still there where I had dumped it.

Possibly the bulk of the ice, in one large mass, had been the reason why it survived. Only the ice on the outside had melted while the interior had maintained its sub-zero temperature.

Water has a very high heat capacity, which means it can absorb a very large quantity of heat and only show a small resulting change in temperature.
 
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I can personally attest as to how long ice can stay frozen without insulation during summer. New Years Day 2020 (mid summer here in Oz) where we were holidaying was cut off from road access and electric power by the recent catastrophic bush-fires we experienced. At midday we discovered that the local Fisherman's Co-op was giving away its shaved ice to any and all as they had no power to keep it and their fish cold. We grabbed several large containers full to help keep our food perishables cold. By the time we got back to our residence the power had been restored and our refrigeration was again working. We held onto the ice just in case there was another power failure.

By late afternoon we were assured that the power was back on permanently. Thinking that the melting ice would eventually cause a flood in the laundry where I had stored it, I dumped it outside on the back lawn believing that it would not last long. The minimum temperature that night was in the low 20s (C).

The next morning I discovered that most of the ice was still there where I had dumped it.

Possibly the bulk of the ice, in one large mass, had been the reason why it survived. Only the ice on the outside had melted while the interior had maintained its sub-zero temperature.

Water has a very high heat capacity, which means it can absorb a very large quantity of heat and only show a small resulting change in temperature.

I've seen the same effect as well with melting snow and ice. Cold water, and ice especially has a 'chaining' effect where the cold core will cause surrounding water to chill and freeze which causes further surrounding water to freeze and so on. In the spring weather, we will see temps go as high as the mid-20's (C) and there will still be thick patches of snow on the ground. Eventually the heat does get the better of these stubborn vestiges of winter, and they soon succumb to the warmer weather. As a kid we'd seek out these cold patches and have snowball fights with the grainy snow that's left usually out of the sun in the shade.
 
Evanston, WY, was one of the icing points on the UP. The Bear River was (and still is) diverted into ponds where, in the winter, ice blocks were cut and stored in a large "ice warehouse". The blocks were packed tightly with sawdust, the insulator, and the ice lasted most, if not all, of the summer. The ice warehouse burned down long ago and I don't know exactly where it was located but it had to be close to the ice ponds. Although Evanston can get get rather warm in the summer daytime, the nights, even in the summer, routinely drop into the 40(s)°F so ice, correctly stored, can last a long time. Heck, I've seen a ¼" of frost on exposed surfaces in mid-July! No, we don't have much of a growing session here.

Laramie, WY, also had and icing plant. My mother-in-law's brother worked there icing refeers when he was young.

If you go on Google Earth and search for Evanston, WY, you'll see the ice ponds easily. They are the "square" water ponds just north of UP's tracks opposite the WalMart parking lot. Today, the ice ponts are fishing pond and, in the winter, the city clears part of one for skating. I don't know if the actual icing tracks are there anymore but might be part of the yard tracks on the north side of the UP mainlines.

Take care,
 
I think they are physically lying to ya !

Creates ice in summer, melts in winter, ya

No. It's real. I saw it on a TV show on the Science Channel called Secrets of the Underground, where two guys explore the underground using the latest technology. Here's the Wikipedia article which corroborates their theory as to why ice forms in the summer and melts in the winter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coudersport_Ice_Mine
 
Here's a branch off of the Boston and Lowell (B&M) to Horn Pond in Woburn, MA. Located at the end of this branch was an ice house used to store the ice collected during the winter months.


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Here's a couple more locations in the greater Boston area - one in Arlington and the other in Belmont.
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Many British stately houses had an ice house. Typically it was a large brick lined hole (often circular) dug into the ground with an entrance at ground level covered with a grass mound. In winter the servants would cut up the ice in the estate lake and store it in the ice house. Being well insulated by the ground, with the amount being required daily, it would probably last though out the year. One can still see many surviving ice houses at such properties as owned by the National Trust. As stated above straw makes a good insulator and may have been used to cover the stored ice.
 
The key is to keep a large mass of ice, with as little surface area as possible. This does prevent melting because there is enough cold mass to offset the small point at which the melting occurs and thereat it forms an equilibrium. As my father said "There are two type of people, those who understand the second law of thermodynamics... and those who don't..."

Ice was a huge business and a lake or pond could be known far and wide for the quality of the ice harvested from it. Some ponds were named for their use in making ice such as Ice House Pond in Acton, Ma and Icehouse Pond in Hopkington, MA (or even Icehouse Pond in Spilsby, UK).
Big business means big money and made some folks rather rich. Check out Frederic Tudor or Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth of Boston for starters.

I have a reprint of "'Woodwards National Architect' of 1869" and design #7 is of an "Ice House and Fruit Room" in 3 plates (29-31) of illustrations. The building is marked as a floor plan of 35' by 27' and some 25' to the peak of the roof (10.66 x 8.3 and 7.62 tall for our metric using folks). Plate 31 specifies a 2" x 8" stud (apparently on 2' center) for the exterior walls and is the only design in the book to have the stud pastern laid out in the main drawing. Measurements from plate #30 reveal the interior ice room as having a 6" wall (2x4 walls with 1" planking on both side is my supposition) with an additional 6" grey/hashed area inside that, apparently for insulation. The interior ice room is marked as measuring 15'4" by 12'4" without the supposed insulation, additionally it measures out to almost 14' tall (4.6736m by 3.7592m and 4.2672 tall). That gives me roughly 2,111 cu.ft. (59.7768 cubic meters) or almost 60,000 liters of ice storage if you account for 6" insulation all around it.
 
Ice was cut from either rivers or lakes near the packing houses. For an example Ashland, Nebraska had two Icehouses where this took place one belonging to the Armor Packing House and Another one that belonged to the Swift Packing Company. Both claimed to be the Largest Ice plants in the world, The Swift Icehouse would flood land just to the Northwest of Ashland by diverting water from the nearby Wahoo Creek. after the Ice was frozen to a certain depth it would be cut by a device that looked much like a plow then poled to a conveyor system that fed it to the Icehouse, Where is as stored by insulating it with straw. As the Packing house which was located in South Omaha demanded, it was shipped in carload lots in icebunker cooled Refer cars to the plant. The Armor Icehouse which was 7 mile up the Ashland-Schuyler Branch line At a Small town Known as Memphis did much the same except it had a full time lake. Armor kept a crew of at least 25 people in the town or living near by and would ship in up to 300 workers in the Ice season. The swift and Company Icehouse was a 20-room, three-level, 192-by-685-foot ice house as well as a bunkhouse, barn and 10 other support buildings each room held 3000 tons of ice for a total of 60,000 tons the Ice was cut in 8 inch thick 20 by 40 inch slabs. In 1931 the Icehouse was destroyed by a Tornando and the land was returned to farming use. The Armor Icehouse was was destroyed by a fire in 1921, and in the 1930 the lake became what is Now the Memphis State Recreation Area.

 
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