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| Last updated on August 7, 2025
Locomotive 182 of the Waterloo, Cedar Falls & Northern leads a freight train across the Cedar River bridge south of Waterloo, Iowa, in the late 1940s or early ’50s.
William D. Middleton photo
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The first car on that train has a story to tell in it’s own right — it’s a Rath Packing (RPRX) meat reefer.
Waterloo-based Rath was an old line packer straight out of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” And like all its competitors. it faced the challenge of either re-orienting itself or falling by the wayside. In Rath’s case, it fell, and fell hard.
In 1959, the late Philip Hastings of the “Trains” staff penned an article on a cab ride between Omaha and Chicago on Illinois Central’s “meat train” CC-6. with specific reference to a large cut of RPRX reefers added at Waterloo. That was the last I heard of the traffic until Interstate Route 80 was completed across Pennsylvania’s northern tier in the summer of 1970 and a brand new fleet of refrigerated tractor trailers appeared under the name of Waterloo-based Kroblin Refigerated Express; it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.
Rath also appeared in increasing frequency in the pages of the Wall Street Journal over the next few years — as a struggling company unable to adjust due to changes in the rigid structure under which it had prospered,
I got a chance to visit Waterloo while on vacation in 1985, about a year after Rath gave up the ghost. There was still some hope of preserving the classic 1920’s -style corporate offices, but the plant was just waiting for the wrecking ball, and the only business in the area was a pawn shop where some of the former Rath employees went to hock their toys.