Schuyler.larrabee wrote:

The ends of ERIE box cars were covered with black car cement, and didn't get painted for years. Roofs got the same treatment.

Interesting point. When I interviewed Earl Hopkins, retired PFE Chief Mechanical Officer, he said that PFE had usually painted roofs and ends which had car cement coatings (car cement "out of the can" was black, but the PFE paint scheme was boxcar red roofs and ends), and right after World War II tried a tinted car cement to be boxcar red (or thereabouts). He told me that it had not worked out very well. After a lot of fussing with the color, they gave up and began just painting the car cement, partly because they didn't like the matte finish of the car cement and its dirt accumulation. By the time PFE changed to black car ends, about 1960, they were no longer using car cement.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

The ends of ERIE box cars were covered with black car cement, and didn't get
painted for years. Roofs got the same treatment.



SGL



From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of
Richard Hendrickson
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2012 8:48 PM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: Re: [STMFC] C&O and Erie 1937 box car Repaints





On Aug 17, 2012, at 4:38 PM, WaltGCox@... <mailto:WaltGCox%40aol.com>
wrote:

When C&O and Erie 1937 AAR box cars with Viking roofs were
repainted into
the C&O for Progress and the larger diamond paint schemes were the
black
ends, roofs, trucks and underbodies repainted the same color as the
rest of
the car or did they remain black?

Walt, I can't answer your question about the C&O cars, but both new
and repainted Erie box cars continued to have black roofs and ends
for some years after the large diamond heralds were introduced -
certainly well into the 1950s.

Richard Hendrickson

In a message dated 8/17/2012 9:00:46 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
scottp459@... writes:




When I was reviewing a lot of C&O box car photos, I got the impression
that in the Progress-logo era (starting 1948) many repaints didn't get black
ends. Yet new "red" / "brown" cars were continuing to come, at least from
Pullman-Standard, with black ends for many years.
Usually I couldn't see enough to judge about the roofs or underbodies. For
my models, I went with all-one-color.
But I do recall a funky older-than-1937-design box car-- which shows up on
a video which includes a bit of rare steam action in color from the
mid-1950s-- which clearly had black ends.

Scott Pitzer

--- In _STMFC@... (mailto:STMFC@...) ,
WaltGCox@... wrote:

When C&O and Erie 1937 AAR box cars with Viking roofs were repainted

into

the C&O for Progress and the larger diamond paint schemes were the black
ends, roofs, trucks and underbodies repainted the same color as the rest

of

the car or did they remain black?
Walt

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

When I was reviewing a lot of C&O box car photos, I got the impression that in the Progress-logo era (starting 1948) many repaints didn't get black ends. Yet new "red" / "brown" cars were continuing to come, at least from Pullman-Standard, with black ends for many years.
Usually I couldn't see enough to judge about the roofs or underbodies. For my models, I went with all-one-color.
But I do recall a funky older-than-1937-design box car-- which shows up on a video which includes a bit of rare steam action in color from the mid-1950s-- which clearly had black ends.

Scott Pitzer

On Aug 17, 2012, at 4:38 PM, WaltGCox@... wrote:

When C&O and Erie 1937 AAR box cars with Viking roofs were
repainted into
the C&O for Progress and the larger diamond paint schemes were the
black
ends, roofs, trucks and underbodies repainted the same color as the
rest of
the car or did they remain black?

Walt, I can't answer your question about the C&O cars, but both new
and repainted Erie box cars continued to have black roofs and ends
for some years after the large diamond heralds were introduced -
certainly well into the 1950s.

Richard Hendrickson

When C&O and Erie 1937 AAR box cars with Viking roofs were repainted into
the C&O for Progress and the larger diamond paint schemes were the black
ends, roofs, trucks and underbodies repainted the same color as the rest of
the car or did they remain black?
Walt