I have looked through hundreds of the photo archives online and cannot find any UP fully yellow hoppers or gondolas for examples of weathering.
I would like to add some realism to some models of these, but from the archives and Google it seems these never existed, or were rare. All examples in the archives are of other colors…UP grey, one end yellow only, maroon etc.
Perhaps these inexpensive cars I have in full yellow were a figment of someone’s imagination. But if you have a photo of such a gondola, hopper or even boxcar, or a link to an example, I would be grateful.
Now that you bring it up, in all my years of railfanning, I haven’t seen any UP yellow gons or hoppers, or covered hoppers for that matter. The lack of these in real life does not slow or stop many manufacturers from painting cars for the UP in yellow because it catches the eye or sells, but have lived around UP for a lot of years and never seen it. Instead, the gons are the mineral red/ or some variation of same, the hoppers are black and I suspect yellow was not used on every type of rolling stock.
But being a Santa Fe modeler, what do I know? Case in point, I have never seen Santa Fe gondolas painted in Indian Red with a big logo that I recall.
I’ve seen Armour Yellow boxcars, stockcars and mechanical refrigerator cars, but have never observed a UP gon or hopper displaying any color other then gray or some rendition of boxcar red.
So this gives me an opportunity to try out my new airbrush, but I’ll need some UP decals now. Guess I’ll go for it since I already made up loads for these and added couplers and steel wheels.
Funny, I never thought to investigate this before. I’m sure these cheapies were just part of some Xmas set, as you say, painted to catch the kiddie’s eye. I can’t remember where I got them either.
I had a UP Gon and it was yellow with the UP logo on it. I think it was made by Bachman, and I say had because I painted it black and it will soon be a Penn Central Gon. [:P]