When railfanning, I often see box cars and covered hoppers lettered for Golden West Service. They often look like they’ve been through the war. Who owns these cars? Does the company still exist?
Guess you are newbie since this was covered some months ago & the conclusion was t"Golden West Service" was a marketing tool of the former SPRR [:o)][:p]
[quote]
Originally posted by GP-9_Man11786
[
The Southern Pacific had a bunch of cars rebuilt and painted in the Golden West Service colors back in the early 90s. They carried reporting marks of the VCY,CRLE and GVSR. Eric or Carl could give you more accurate info than I can. I think it was basicly a cheaper way to rebuild the cars (union busting the car repair guys) but there might be more to it. Anyway Golden West was a part of the SP and was a joint venture with Gunderson.
Check out these sites:
Thanks for the info.
I believe this was a financial transaction in which SP sold the cars to Greenbrier for cash. Greenbrier then did some degree of upgrading to them, something in the range of paint to heavy repair and then leased them back to SP. I do not know where they did the work, but they now have their own shops. I suspect was in nonrailroad shops as railroad labor is very expensive.
In the short term SP got some cash, but Greenbrier got the future lease income which was their incentive.
It apperars that at least some of the cars are reverting to Union Pacific, as successor to SP, as I have seen some of them restenciled to SP reporting marks recently. It appears that the cars are reverting to their old SP numbers but I can not prove that. This is not a total repaint, just restencil.
Mac
The cars were a lease/purchase financial smoke and mirrors between the DRGW ownership and Greenbrier. It was said at the time that after 20 years, the cars would return to SP markings if they (the cars) still existed. All of these cars should be real close to their 30 service years.
DRGW ownership made out like bandits because they were “managers” and “owners” and received a portion of the lease payments Greenbrier did all the work and made out pretty well also since they got nearly new cars for a very small price. SP did get a “purchase price”, but then had to pay high lease rates to use the cars. Golden West was a joint venture between Greenbrier and DRGW and was a separate company. The SP was cut out of the loop and left holding the bag for the costs.
Here is the aforementioned topic.
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=41936
Thanks, EricSP. I tried looking for the thread, but didn’t find it. Enjoyed reading it again.