Tonight while driving home I was stopped by a train. Not an unusual event, until I took a good look at one of the smaller cars in the train.
This boxcar was painted blue, had white logo and lettering, was maybe 50 ft long (it was a small car among all the high-cubes anyways) and had a PAN AM logo, like the old airline.
How can this be? Pan Am Airlines went bankrupt back when I was in college, and they didn’t do trains anyway.
If anybody knows the story behind this boxcar and the company, please tell me.
Railfan and Railroad had a pic of the boxcar about six issues back. Pretty neat looking paintscheme, colors not too far off what I use on my freelance road.
Guilford Transportation Industries owns Boston & Maine, Maine Central, Springfield Terminal and, you guessed it, the trademark to Pan American Airways. GTI has not given any reason behind the Pan Am boxcars.
My dad who was in the airline business for quite a few years told me that airline freight cars was not too unusual. He said he thought at one time KLM, Sabena and Cathay Pacfic also ran cargo freight cars. Many times they were run between cities with no service to the airlines cargo hub.