I saw a big old CN logo on a boxcar and it looked COOL! I otherwise noticed that lately they paint small cn logos, same with stuff like UP, just a little logo on boxes. Ya gotta have big logos on Railroad cars. What are they trying to be? descrete or something? Railroads should brag!
Paint = Money, Painting = Money. ROI = Small.
John Q. doesn’t care about the RR. Despite the fact that the car he’s driving and most of the clothes he’s wearing probably travelled by train, all he knows is that the train is holding up his trip to wherever.
The shippers don’t care if the car has a lot of fancy advertising or just reporting marks and the mandatory stuff. As long as it’s where it’s supposed to be, when it’s supposed to be.
As much as we’d like cars to be lettered like the old days, those days are for the most part gone.
I agree with the tree (I made that up [:P] ) people used to wave at trains…now the flip us off!!! Except for the railfans out there!!! [:D]
OK but brown paint cost the same as white paint.
Or even better, graffitti is free.
Graffitti is worse, …not better.
Yep, the old boxcar ads used to tell siories to everyone who watched!!!
Everywhere West
Route of Phoebe Snow
the great RF&P route map
Serves the South
They would tease your mind, take you on journeys.
What’s the Katy bringing to my neck of the woods?
Shouldn’t I be more specific and Ship Union Pacific?
Western Maryland and Nickel Plate (speed lettering) can move the goods!!!
Today’s railcars give us the whiff of gulags, concentration camps, and pinched imaginations. Competition and bragging are gone, gone, gone.
Some of us would hate to admit it, but when a well done and witty piece of grafitti rolls by, doesn’t a part of our soul just leap out to embrace it? There is such a need here. I feel a nagging dread and a real ache in the heart about recent developments.
AAR contributory Paint Fund???
I’m ready for the Stencil Committee or the nut-house, but I guess it’s just me???
Rix
On the way home I saw some covered hoppers just with cargils markings and small logos.they were mostly back too .thats a big canvass for a graffiti artist.
stayin safe
Joe
[:)]I think Larry said it better than anyone.
IT COSTS MONEY!
I think back to the ‘OLD’ C & O ;they were painting Locos Black/w white stripes,
It was ‘Supposed’? to be a cost cutting endeavor? but appearentally did’t work!
And YES! I’m a C & O FAN!
Ask C Shaver!
CP still has that nice golden beaver logo on the sides of its newer loco’s, I really like that logo compared to the CN “map” of north america. – The CN locos are usually to dirty to see the map anyway.
When all you do is put the small reporting marks on a boxcar it is also easier to change ownership and the reporting marks. It seems that I always see big brown boxcars that have a nice fresh square of paint right where the old reporting marks where and the new reporting marks right overtop.
It makes no sense for a railroad to paint a logo or map on a freight car when some #$%^ with a spray can will spread graffiti all over it.[:(!][:(!][:(!]
“GREAT ANSWER!”
It really doesn’t make any sense?
Other remark! [censored]
I think tastes can change, too. UP, for example, put a lot into the cushion-underframe box cars when they first came out: yellow, silver ends, huge decals. That would look positively garish in today’s world.
On locomotives in recent years, most railroads have devoted more space to something other than the base color: UP added a flag (and, before that, lightning stripes to break up the monotony). NS added white and a horsehead on the sides, BNSF went completely overboard, CP added its resurrection of the old image, CN and KCS stayed about the same. CSX? Dark blue with gold lettering that will quickly vanish under a layer of coal dust.
Yes, I, like Walter (Locomutt) am a big fan of the old C&O, and think that the black paint job was about the most ill-advised thing they ever did (happily, about the most short-lived). As I said, it seemed to go in cycles, and there were ups as well as downs: Chessie System paint replaced the blue “dip” job (and on the other side, gray with red and yellow “Family Lines” replaced SCL black and L&N pale gray), and later a tasteful blue, yellow, and gray replaced the CSX “Stealth” paint job. Maybe CSX will survive long enough for things to come full circle again.
Carl
Of course it’s all about money! But it is nice that some RRs still have an interest in keeping their equipment in good shape. The UP GP15s at the yard between Division and North by I-90/94 look great, as does the new CP switcherthere with the huge Golden Beaver logo,
I saw a ex-SSW car with brand new paint with a HUGE Cotton Belt Route logo on the side. I’ve seen about 3…really suprised us each time we saw them.