I recently received a NIB Walthers Pennsy B60B baggage car which I purchased on ebay. I was suprised to find this car came with lime green trucks rather than the more typical black ones most of the heavyweight cars in my fleet have. Also, the roof was brown rather than the more common black I’ve seen for Pennsy heavies. I had never seen these colors either in photos or model form before. Is this really a prototypical color scheme? If so, how long was this scheme in use?
While we’re on this subject, I also have several REA express reefers in my fleet from Branchline and Walthers which have trucks which are a darker shade of green, closely matching the body color. Are these also prototypical?
The Walthers site says the subject Pennsy car’s scheme dates from 7/39 to 6/41. I’m pretty sure that’s close to correct from my recollections of the discussions when these came out. Thus the trucks are the correct color. Looks like you’re getting into WW2’ish here, what with the troop sleepers and all.
Now, the REA cars are definitely later–the Branchline being 1947-48 and the Walthers 1955. The trucks are the proper color (from an excellent article in Volume 7 of “Railway Prototype Cyclopedia”), though they would get weathered more quickly than the car, and might pass for black fairly quickly.
The PRR had about seven different paint schemes over the years. The cars with the green trucks are the original paint scheme for the B60 cars however… Since color film was not available a lot of guessing and thought goes into the correct color. Most think they should be more olive drab. B60s rarely were washed so most wound up being grunge colored and stayed that way. Since they were usually mail and express they got cut off and sent to REA or the post office before the rest proceeded to Sunnyside for washing
More research is prompting me to modify my statements about the B60 baggage car. Walthers lists two versions with the green trucks. The one I mentioned previously is 932-5831 and it has “gothic” lettering. Walthers also makes 932-5871. That one has “railroad roman” lettering and precedes the “gothic” one. Ed