Is there a correlation between the colors used on covered hoppers and what they were transporting? Generally, it seems that cars for cement, lime, and sugar are white/off-white/gray in color.
The reason for asking is that I just purchased a Bowser NKP ('37) and L&N ('43) covered hopper for my early '40s NYC layout. The white L&N hopper says that its designated “FOR CEMENT LOADING ONLY” but the black NKP hopper has no such markings.
Are/were lighter colors used so that the cleanliness of the cars and the purity of the contents can be more easily inspected for contamination? I’ve also seen oxide red on older covered hoppers, as well.
Grey is sort of a default colour for many modern covered hoppers, but different railroads or companies will paint them different colours based on their corporate colours.
Covered hoppers for carbon black service often tend to be painted black though.
Covered hoppers are sorta recent in the life of freight cars. Box, flat, and gons go back at least 150 years. Tanks a hundred. Covered hoppers are more recent. Anyway, what I’m getting to is that I think railroads painted their “new” covered hoppers in their regular freight car colors at first–either freight car red or black. Many/most decided fairly quickly to change to a light grey. Cement color, really, since that’s what they primarily carried at first. I think. I’ll not speculate on the exact reason. Great Northern, for example, started with freight car red but later went with grey for cement cars.
Later, in the sixties, when grain covered hoppers arrived, there was a tendency to paint them grey, too. But there didn’t appear a real need, so colors again became popular. GN started with grey (except for the 5250’s) but went to blue for grain cars when they went to blue for everything else. Except for cement cars. BN pretty much stayed with their green, though they again dabbled in grey for their cement cars.
I think it’s possible that there were some earlyish covered hoppers that were bought for non-cement service–maybe casting sand, for example. Those cars could have stayed in black or FCR, as the contents wouldn’t discolor the outsides so much.
the color on the outside does not necessarily match the color on the inside.
there is a nice touch i have seldom seen modeled. MP and it’s subsidiaries had a lot of business out of St. Genevieve Mo. hauling cement and other lime products. rain would wash the lime dust down over the reporting marks on the cars until they were obliterated. the solution was to weld a little piece of steel “awning” directly above the initial and number to protect them from the lime wash.
A lot of older kit instructions, as well as painting notes with decal sheets, stated the use black for the underbody. That would be correct for very few covered hoppers, and those for which it would be correct tend to also have black slope sheets and other details in addition to the frame. For most freight cars the frame and carbody are initially the same color. MP also often used body colored trucks on its covered hoppers.
At least on 2 railroads, I know the colors had no bearing at all on what they carried. I have 2 E&B Valley, (Eastern Car Works also IIRC), hoppers that are painted totally different from their lading, both carried cement.
One, a PRR 70 ton hopper was painted in tuscan red, and the other one, a SRR hopper was black.
