When did reporting marks with Ampersands go out of fashon?
and when did the AAR limit the reporting marks to 4 letters?
I would guess the late, late 1960’s and early 1970s’ when ampersands were phased out of corporate logos not just in railroading but in businesses in general. Computers stepped up that trend, too, later on, as punch card criteria limited certain fields to four characters and the ampersand was not an option.
With only a handful of exceptions (Southern and a few others), reporting marks tended to be three or four characters and there were a fair number of two and three character reporting marks. During the 1970’s, the proliferation of short lines in the fallout from the creation of Conrail led to a lot of four-character reporting marks that didn’t always line up very well with the name of the road, such as ERES for Erie Western.
I still love “R” for Rutland
Again. The computer age, first the punch cards then the disks and now the digital age, all pushed the maximum four digit or letter symbol. Look at the stock market listing in the daily paper or on line for further use.
Dave,
I am not sure what the actual dates are, but in the 1970’s many railroads standardized their reporting marks. I suspect computerized reporting was the culprit. For example, the Southern railroad did not use any reporting marks on the sides of their cars - They just said SOUTHERN. By the 70’s, they were stenciled SOU. The same thing happened to B&O/C&O reporting marks as they lost the ampersand.
The ARR did limit reporting marks to 4 alpha characters, and 6 digits about the same time. D&RGW became DRGW in the computer systems. CRI&P changed to CRIP and then just RI, and finally to ROCK for reporting marks.
Jim
and then there’s RRRR and pirate vocabulary matey.
I still like “&c.” better than “etc.”
Randy — Don’t forget “M” for Montour. Showing our age, I guess.
The Pennsylvania for a long period of time (at least in my area) was referred to a ‘The P Company’; though I doubt the letter P was the official reporting mark.
A question about “The ‘P’ Comp’ny”: I don’t hear it mentioned in this neck of the woods (Maryland). But I did hear it when I lived in Ohio. Was that a Lines West thing?
That a sister company to YARR?
The Pennsylvania’s reporting mark was PRR. Its stock symbol on the New York Stock Exchange was P.
There must be a ton of ancient “SOUTHERN” Gondolas pout there then, cause I see a lot of those on NS trains here,
Also I was reminded of a Gondola I saw that had the SOU part of the “SOUTHERN” repainted as a reporting mark
As a freight-car freak who watches such things, I can assure people of a few things:
Rock Island never used “CRI&P” as a reporting mark, at least in post-World War II times, and I doubt if they did before. “ROCK” was the post-reorganization reporting mark.
An ampersand was used on reporting marks “C&O” and “B&O” until those companies’ takeover by CSXT in about 1987.
A lot of companies used their entire names as the reporting mark into modern times: “Pennsylvania”, “Southern Pacific”, “Southern” (which actually lasted as the reporting mark until the NS affiliation…different from the actual merger), and “Soo Line”, which predated the name (and wasn’t replaced as a reporting mark by “SOO” until the very late 1970s).
Along with the legal reporting marks, there was a “Uniform Alphabetic Code” that codified the ampersand-free marks that are now accepted as the norm…in Equipment Registers, these were listed in a separate index at least as early as the middle 1960s. You could find “SOO” and “SOU” and other such things there, when the reporting marks were the full name, or “CO”, “BO”, “DRGW”, etc., when the reporting marks included ampersands.
Speaking of the ampersands, sometimes they made a difference…“C&G” was the Columbus & Greenville, while “CG” was the Central of Georgia.
This subject reacted like the Bakken crude can…so many responses…
A question will conclude this missive, and its answer will impact your funnybones if you find the answer.
The same outfit that put out the “Official Guide” also, memory don’t fail me now, printed the “Railway Equipment Register,” a listing, inventory in print on something a tad better than newsprint paper, of all the freight cars in North America, Canada & the US, USA only. Reporting marks…a gold mine.
Deep inside the issue, pointed out to me by a colleague at the S
P’s ESTC, was a listing for a really small car owner’s, a dozen cars or so of covered hoppers which used the reporting “marks” of HOCX. The “X” signified a non-common carrier owner… but the HOC, find out what they represent?
Enjoy it.
Answer, Tuesday, and the wind caused derailment of a UP train of a derailment “bonus” question answer…
One of the books on Iowa railroads has a picture of a Rock Island box car circa 1900-1910. The reporting mark is RI. RI and ROCK were both used after 1975 until the RI shut down in 1980. Early on, reporting marks of companies the RI acquired were used on cars lettered for the RI. There’s a picture of a box car with CO&G marks and I know I’ve seen some elsewhere for the BCR&N and the SP&KC Short Line. It seems like I may have seen a picture of a car using CRI&G marks, which was Texas subsidiary for their Texas trackage. Not to be confused with the B-RI used jointly by the FW&D(CB&Q) and RI.
Another picture of Milwaukee Road (The nick name back then actually was St. Paul instead of Milwaukee.) box cars shows the reporting mark to be CM&StP. Another picture taken in Mason City just shows the name spelled out, no visible initials. Neither picture gives a time frame.
Pictures of Illinois Central box cars (circa 1915) have the name spelled out, but don’t appear to have initials on the sides. The visible end of one of the cars was in direct sunlight making it hard to see the lettering on it.
Jeff
When I first became involved with RR forums one of the questions at the time was, when did the CPR stop using periods in their reporting mark, C.P. I don’t recall ever seeing an answer, but I actually did see cars painted that way, in the early '60’s. I consider myself fortunate that CP was never big on throwing potentially serviceable equipment away.
Bruce
One other thing I wanted to add, when I was little Dad explained to me that the combination of initials and numbers on the cars were like automobile license plates. No two were ever the same. But the question I have been wracking my brain over since this thread appeared is this, what were other names for reporting marks? I don’t recall ever hearing that term until I started seeing it in railway books when I began collecting them in the '80’s. That wasn’t the term I was taught.
Bruce
While the names may have been written in full names and all - the real issues, how was the car identified on the paperwork of the era - paperwork that the carriers got paid on?