Also, bright colors tend to reflect the sun's rays, thus taking some stress off the insulation. Dark colors tend to absorb heat, causing the insulation to be less effective.
Jim Kubanick
Morgantown WV
As if the Canadian roads cared about this, both using freight car red for reefers well into the twentieth century. The CN did do some experiments with Aluminum paint in the thirties, I believe, and found that it helped, so long as the cars were clean, but the effect diminished as the cars got dirty. CN eventually went to light gray as being more cost effective.
The real reason why reefers were painted yellow / orange is like so many other things in railroading... "We've always done it that way."
