Occasionally I will see CN covered hopper cars with, what is probably a decal of, a kangaroo holding a Canadian flag while standing on Australia (Example). I looked at the CN Special Schemes page but it did not have anything about that. I tried Internet searches that yielded no results or only irrelevant results. Does anyone know anything about this?
Some kind of grafitti mocking a couple of the British Empire’s larger and more successful outposts, perhaps ?
Maybe just pre-done as a decal for quicker and undetected application ?
I’ve seen them around here (CN’s Neenah Sub) too…and wondered the same thing as well. Great question.
They seem to only be on the CN 389000 series. If it were not for the outline of Australia, I would guess it was a pun (kangaroo and hopper).
Groan . . . [swg]
I believe it was the Louisiana Midland that had drawings of a rabbit on its “Crop-hoppers” (painted white, with pink and purple markings).
Eric, I know I’ve seen that decal on cars before, but I have no clue as to the significance.
[:-,] Then there’s York County, PA’s “Rabbit Transit” [swg] bus operation - “Just Hop On!”:
http://www.rabbittransit.org/pages/aboutus.html
Though it does have a rail-related component - a service to a local rail-trail:
http://www.rabbittransit.org/docs/RABBITRailTrail.pdf
- Paul North.
Those Rabbit Transit buses did (at least the small buses) have fluffy tails painted on the rear of them.
I was able to find a close-up picture of the logo in question on my Flickr page.
I have an email in to a source at CN so we’ll see what they say.
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