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There's a fascinating post about prepairing ice at the end of 19th century - beginning of 20th. The post is in russian, but photos are good enough on their own: http://engineering-ru.livejournal.com/39019.html

There's a silent YouTube video referenced at the end of that piece showing the stages of ice harvesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x9rc-54s-I очень хорошо.

This is an interesting wiki article on an ice baron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Tudor#The_ice_business

Keep in mind that the rate at which a block of ice melts scales with its surface area, so it actually becomes easier to transport large blocks of ice, if you have the other infrastructure to support it.