What colour were Gt Northern Passenger car roofs.The photographs I have show virtually the same colour as the sides. I think the roof colour should be black is this correct?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Alex
I believe the roofs on Pullman Green heavyweight cars would be black, and on the later EB dark green and Omaha orange paint scheme, the roofs would be dark green.
Streamlined lightweight GN cars carried the Pullman green colour over the
roof. According to the GNRHS, the roof colour on heavyweights (pre-1947)
is a darker shade of green than the Pullman green of the sides-somewhat
like Brunswick green.
When I was about 12 I remember getting in a heck of an argument with my cousin about wether the Empire Builders roofs were black or green. I said Black he said green and won the argument technically. But they always appeared black to me. Perhaps because of weathering. The Dec. 1991 MR has a great color spread on the Empire Builder and the colors they’ve printed look to be black. Also to answer my own question about wether the GN had any heavyweights in the orange and green color, theres a photo of a heavyweight platform obs. car in those very colors. It was used on the SP and S run from Spokane to Portland and back.
There were many GN heavyweight cars repainted into Empire Builder colors.
Through the 50s until it’s dicontinuance in 1959, the Cascadian ran with updated
heavyweight cars. So did the Badger and Gopher trains which ran up in Minnesota. Not to mention the Seattle-Portland Pool trains as well So EB painted GN heavyweights are not really rare.
(Thanks to passengerfan for discreetly correcting my slipshod recalling
of my research.)
GN liked any car that could end up being used in a name train like the EB to have the green and orange paintscheme, so indeed very many heavyweight cars were painted into that scheme.