Lately I have been spotting an increase in the use of coloured painted dots or circles on freight cars but have not been able to discover what the dots/circles mean.
Most of the dots/circles have been painted on autorack multilevel cars and painted on the second vertical exterior post just above the truck either at the A end or the B end it doesn’t seem to matter. A lot of older SOO Line boxcars have variations on the colours below as well.
Dot/circles so far have been: (1) red only (2) red over a blue rectangle on a yellow background (3) red dot on a yellow background (4) grey or white only (5) blue only (6) yellow only.
Does anyone know what these various coloured dots/circle signify? Are there more variations than the colours above?
I looked in on this one because I was told that it “had my name written all over it.”
I have two things to say to that:
Not guilty!
Don’t know what these dots would be for; they’re probably a code understood by automobile manufacturers or loaders indicating possible uses or assignments.
More help might be forthcoming if I happen to notice a correlation between these dots and (1) types of auto rack or (2) colors in relation to certain manufacturers. Won’t be easy, since it’s difficult to see inside the racks.
I can tell you this much , on Auto racks the dots on the side tell the loaders the minium deck hights inside the cars . I used to have a list of what each one means but I can’t seem to find it . The Dots on the doors tell the inspectors what up- grades to the doors have been done .
All of the dots have meaning but they are generally car type specific .
I can’t remember the exact details, Rick, but it had to do with a certain manufacture of wheels or axles that were suspected of causing a number of wrecks. The order was to change them out as quickly as possible, and inspect them right away. The circle was on a black square: if it was yellow, the wheels had been inspected and found to be all right. If it was white, they had to be changed out (working at a yard with a good-sized repair track, I don’t recall ever seeing a white dot).
These markings applied to 50-ton and 70-ton freight cars only (both of which used 33-inch wheels), but every once in a while you’d find a yellow dot on a stray 100-ton car. I’m pretty sure the whole episode was in the mid- to late 1970s, but of course the dots lasted on some of these cars well beyond that (you might still see one, if you’re lucky…and it had better be yellow!)