Refrigerated van

It was Gustavus Swift who succeed in the winter of 1877 for the first time in developing an efficient cooling system for railway wagons for Chicago businesses and meat producers.

Compared with machine-cooled vans, ice-cooled wagons have the disadvantage of uneven temperature control, because the cooling effect is only achieved by air circulation.

In Asia, Chinese and Kazakh railways are experimenting with using refrigerated rail cars to transport sensitive consumer electronic goods manufactured in China to European markets.

The products are transported in climate-controlled rail cars from factory towns in the interior of China to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and from there by air to Europe.

The use of insulate climate-controlled cars makes it possible for these kinds of goods to be transported by rail even in winter, which had not been done previously.