I find it amazing that unrepaitned Rock Island rollingstock is still on the rails 30 years after the Rock’s bankruptcy.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1993234
I’ve also seen pics of Rock Island covered hoppers that are still in service with Iowa Interstate.
Presuming that the car body is structurally sound, beyond identifying the car as now being owned by DWC, why should DWC invest several thousand dollars in repainting the car???..just to repaint i! There is no economic return in painting equipment just for the sake of painting it. I suspect sound Rock equipment will go to the scrap yards in Rock paint when the equipment reaches it’s interchange lifetime limit.
Yep!
Some are still running around i their Blue Paint and Route Rock. They live mostly on some of the short line granger roads, going into and out of storage as the need to move grain grows or shrinks. The tip off is the reporting initials and car numbers as to their current ownership. Saw two on a siding over at Clearwater,Ks on a spur of the K&O RR ( a WATCO property).
Most of the Rock Island equipment that survived post-merger was relettered CNW, UP, or GTW, among others. I’m pretty sure that UP owned its cars outright (they probably financed them for the RI when they were built), but most of the other stuff was owned by leasing companies (notably predecessors of GE Rail Services Corporation), and could be yanked and moved around fairly quickly. A lot of the former CNW equipment has gone elsewhere by now. I’m not sure which series of covered hoppers remain, but the box cars are down to one (716000) series–others have turned up on numerous short lines. A lot of nice Pullman Standard cars from the former CNW 718000 series are now leased to UP, but carry EEC reporting marks and three-digit numbers.
Some of the cars are already approaching their 40-year service limit. I suspect that a lot of the cars that were returned to the UP in 1980 are too old for them now–at any rate, there aren’t many of those left.
There’s a Rock Island combine sitting on a siding near Kolb Road in Tucson, Arizona, along with an SP Daylight coach and several other coaches, combines, and a baggage car with assorted fallen flag road names.
I think they may be crew quarters and tool cars for track gangs working in remote areas, that are parked because the double-track construction project has slowed down in Arizona due to the economic conditions.
BALTACD makes a good point about not having to repaint an entire ex Rock Island car, but there’s one detail the successor owners overlooked.
Stenciling new reporting marks directly over the old Rock Island ones has proven to be an unsatisfactory practice over time. Very often those new reporting marks bleed off, and sometimes one has to almost guess at what the new initials and number really are. Had the new owners at least sandblasted those Rock Island reporting marks off first before applying coats of primer and the paints required for displaying new initials and car number, that would make identifying those cars so much easier.
Haven’t seen as many blue Route Rock box cars or covered hoppers as in the past couple of years. A month ago, I did see a rare (at least in Utah) smooth-side (ACF Center Flow?) hopper car in a UP train consist. The real ex-RI finds are the gray covered hoppers with speed lettering, or a box car with similar lettering.
And while we’re on the topic of Rock Island rolling stock, has anyone seen any of RI’s old Rock Island Motor Transit semi trailers? Unless it’s been moved, UP has one in a MoW yard nearby their North Salt Lake Yard. The trailer also bears a faded Western Pacific logo. I gather WP took the opportunity to add to their trailer fleet by picking up former RI trailers at a discount following the Rock’s shutdown.