Howdy,
I was wondering if there ever was a real set of Santa Fe streamliners with a red stripe on them. I often see this paint scheme in model railways but have never seen it in a real picture.
Thanks
Santa Fe’s stainless steel equipment was completely unpainted except for black lettering. Southern Pacific’s stainless-steel equipment for the “Sunset” had a red letterboard above the windows running the length of the car.
Santa Fe streamlined cars were almost exclusively unpainted stainless steel with only black lettering on the letterboard.
Some models were made with a wide red band through the windows. This never happened in real life.
Some models of smooth side streamlined cars are sold with thin red, black and yellow lines at floor level on a plain silver body. This colour scheme was used for a single train, the Valley Flyer which used a similarly painted partly streamlined pacific locomotive but it used standard clerestory roof heavyweight steel cars (not streamlined cars) painted silver with the three colour stripe at floor level.
Models of streamlined cars are also available painted in two tone blue and silver (matching the 4-6-4 3460). I know of only one car (the body tilting pendulum car) that was painted in those colours (but I am willing to be corrected If anyone has photos )!
M636C
Thanks for the clarification guys.
The only streanlined pax equipment with that red window stripe were the 1948/1955 Katy/Frisco Texas Special cars and the Frisco Meteor cars. These all started out also with red roofs and ends, and maroon side sills (they quickly got repainted red the first time they ran them through the shop). Some of the Katy cars got black roofs under the Deramus administration in the late 1950s.
The McGinnis New Haven cars had an orange window stripe.
That’s as close as it gets.