SP 40 ft box car with roof walks. When did SP change from
circle herald to gothic style lettering? Thanks for your comments.
Tomas in the colorado mountains
TGant–
I can’t give you an exact date, but SP changed the Roman to Gothic style on their new equipment sometime in the early to mid 1950’s. It was a fairly slow process on older cars, as they went through re-painting as they returned to SP home territory. I remember seeing the original Roman/circular herald as late as the early 1960’s on some older cars.
Tom
tgant,
June, 1955, marked the introduction of the SP billboard gothic on freight cars. The inital application had both the billboard lettering (left side on 40 ft box cars) and the SP circle herald (right side on 40 ft box cars) co-existing. This lasted for about three years. A good illustration may be found on Red Caboose’s site for their (out of stock) RR-38094 40 ft box.
Suspect the next change came with the general change of paint standards in June, 1958, when gray and scarlet paint went on the locos and the passenger car got the “General Service” “tomato stripe” scheme. Freight cars lost the herald at about that time.
As twhite notes, the paint schemes in use overlapped by many years, especially from the mid-50’s onward. Steam operations (largely concluded by the mid-50’s, though strong in Central California, yet) put serious wear on paint which forced more frequent painting in the earlier times. Wood cars lost their paint more rapidly–another cause of frequent repaints slipping away by the mid-50’s. Finally, the railroads–and DJ Russell’s SP was a prime one for this–refused to spend more money on “image” at this time. Thus, multiple paint schemes could be found on the SP fleet. A rule of thumb (subject to all the problems of such generalizations!) might be that steel cars got shopped, upgraded, painted after about ten years’ service. That said, many, many, 40 ft box cars went to the scrapper in delivery paint.
Final note: almost ALL SP steel 40 ft box cars had 10 ft interior height–right up to the final major class of 1953. The rest of the rail industry had moved to 10’-6", especially post-WWII, but SP hung onto the lower height. One explanation was that green lumber (fresh cut) cubes out (volume) in a 10 ft IH car about the same time it maxes out (weight) for a 50 ton car. SP had a LOT of lumber loading! IN HO, the Red Caboose cars, albeit of pre-war design, are one of the better choices.
If you seek more
Beaver–
After I wrote my response to TGant, I started to wonder about the dates, myself. Thanks for the detailed clarification.
You not only helped TGant, you helped me, since I model both Rio Grande and Espee during the 'forties, and I’ve been very careful to try and keep my Espee rolling stock as true to the era as I can. I appreciate it, believe me!
Tom