The English translation for this is “When Empty, to Factory.” I saw this, the Spanish phrase, on a yellow rectangle on UP 454252. Since it does not say what factory, this makes no sense. I did notice that the yellow rectangle extended a bit below the phrase. However, it does not look like anything had been painted over in the rectangle. The rectangle is painted over graffiti, so it must be fairly recent. Perhaps they have not put on there which factory. Does anyone know anything about this?
It simply means “return via reverse route” which would be available on the original (loded) waybill.
Thanks, that brings up some more questions. I have always assume that the person who decides where an empty car goes is sitting in an office somewhere and does not necessarily see the car. Is this correct? If so, why do they paint this on the car? Is it so the guys doing the switching can see it and double check that it is going to the right place?
Some cars are assigned to a specific loading point. These cars would be marked in some form like, “When empty return to Agent CMSTP&P RR Amana IA.” (That’s what was used for cars assigned to loading out of the Amana Refrigeration plant.) The cars could be home road, or sometimes foreign lines that were involved in the movement of the loads might assign cars to a specific point.
Cars marked to return to a specific point would return empty to ensure the shipping point had a sufficient supply of cars to load. Otherwise, foreign empties that were unassigned could be confiscated on the return route for loads going to or via the home road. Home road cars without an assigned point could be loaded wherever, for a destination wherever.
The cars would be marked in case a car gets misplaced or overlooked on a track list. A crew coming across the car even if they didn’t have it on their paperwork would have a general idea of where the car was going if it were empty.
The vagueness of the placard seen, makes me think maybe it was used at a local yard to let the local crew know that the car was to be spotted for loading at the factory when released empty. Hope that place only has one factory.
Jeff
Thanks for the reply. As for foreign cars, I have seen SP boxcars marked to return to an engine plant somewhere in Mexico, I do not remember where, when empty. I have also heard that many of SP’s “beer cars” were marked “When Empty, return to C&S Agent Golden, Colo” and that DRGW’s Woodpacker cars were marked similarly except to SP at Eugene, OR.
The placard on the UP car being for local crews makes sense. The SP cars to the engine plant I mentioned above had the placard in English and Spanish. If I remember correctly, the English placard had something about returning the car to the Mexican railroad at Eagle Pass, TX and the Spanish placard said to send the car to the plant and included the location. On the UP car, the placard was only in Spanish. I would have expected it to be in English also since it seems unlikely UP would have a car in service exclusively in Mexico (on another railroad) and I spotted the car in the USA.