Hey there, I’ve been going over my history of the SP and one question that has escaped me is the difference between locos and rolling stock that are lettered “southern pacific” and “southern pacific lines”. At first I thought it might be a naming trend that went on for a while but I’ve seen video clips and pictures of side by side equipment (primarily locomotives) that have it written both ways, or in some cases, the lettering doesn’t show up at all aside from the number. This seems to be especially apparent on cab forwards but I can’t seem to find an answer on why the different trends were the way they were, and in some cases overlapping as I said before.
There will be more detailed answers than mine, but SP, like many other railroads, went through organizational changes over the years either because of bankruptcy or stock ownership or merging entities, or other reorganizations, thus changing names; sometimes it was just marketing. Someone more conversant with SP can fill in the details and dates.
Contact the Southern Pacific Historical and Technical Society or go to their web site and do some research there – the answer may be on their site.
I would suspect that it was the equipment of subsidiary companies, such as the Texas & New Orleans, that was lettered “Southern Pacific Lines”. I don’t remember lettering details from back then, but in the mid-1960s I used to see plenty of SP box cars whose old T&NO numbers could be seen under blocks of paint.
For some reason, SSW didn’t fall into this grouping back then–its equipment remained lettered SSW right through to the present (locomotives excepted, of course).
New York Central had the same phenomenon, but I’d never really thought to question the practice.
I pretty much assumed that it referred to (and was seen on) equipment that had been merged into NYC, like the Michigan Southern. In some cases, I think the corporate identity of the original company may have lived on, but within the bounds of the NYC.
If that were true there wouldn’t have been a period where the GS series locos for the daylight and a large number of others operating in California had the “Southern Pacific Lines” lettering. Granted it’s probably a logistics issue that’s behind what I’m looking for but I doubt that the T&NO is the reason, once again in part due to the GS series locos (4449 once wore the “Southern Pacific Lines”) and also about half of the pictures I see of the cab forwards where the lettering shows on the tender (approximately 1/3 of the pictures I’ve seen for the later cab forwards there is actually a lack of lettering on the sides of the tender with only the numbers showing).
A reasonable suspicion, until you look at which engines had “Lines” on their tenders. Conventional wisdom is that “Southern Pacific” replaced “Southern Pacific Lines” on tenders circa 1946; after that, nothing had “Lines” except engines that hadn’t been repainted.