Atlas O-scale make PS-2 hoppers in their ‘Trainman’ line, and I see from Michael Spoor’s ‘CB&Q Color Guide’ that the numbers in the series 85050 to 85064 were fitted with Barber S-2-A roller bearing trucks and painted in the black scheme. The book mentions that this is the post-1958 paint scheme. It is a pity that these books do not contain a brief resume of the livery details.
I would like to know when the various Burlington paint schemes were in use, allowing for the inevitable overlap between repaints. I see CB&Q rolling stock in mineral red, silver, black, and Chinese red, but in which order were they introduced. I’d like to get things right for modelling up to a cut-off point of approximately 1958.
Well keep in mind railroads often painted different types of cars different colors, it was only starting I think in the sixties that you had railroads adopting a company color that all cars were painted. So the ABC railroad c. 1950 might have their boxcars painted tuscan red, flats and gondolas black, covered hoppers light gray, wood reefers yellow sides with tuscan roofs and ends, steel reefers silver, cabooses bright red with black roofs, and passenger cars Pullman green with black roofs.
As for the Burlington, I believe the Chinese Red didn’t come in until around 1962 or so. Re the PS-2s specifically I would maybe drop a line to the Burlington Route Historical Society.
For covered hoppers, the choice is mineral red (in some case nearly brown), black or grey. The first PS-2s came in mineral red, after that some were repainted in the mineral red or black as noted in the book, the new ones purchased in 1958 came in the new grey paint scheme. Burlington Bulletin #20 gives the years built, truck types and some other useful information for each series of covered hoppers the Q owned. From the photographs and captions, its pretty easy to figure out when cars were repainted, what scheme and other details.
Chinese Red was introduced in 1958 but was never applied to covered hoppers other than lettering.
That brings up another problem in sorting out paint schemes, in some cases a railroad would introduce a new paint and lettering scheme, but some cars would only get the new graphics and keep their traditional black, grey or boxcar red colors.
For example when Great Northern brought the “Big Sky Blue” paint scheme with the modernized Rocky herald and lettering styles in the 1960’s, they did paint boxcars, cabooses and engines sky blue, but other cars retained their traditional colors but used the new style graphics.
An example (in model form) is this Atlas N model of a GN/Western Fruit Express reefer, showing the “Big Sky Blue” style letters and herald, but still using the traditional yellow sides.
