Good morning!
Go here to see photos for this week’s installment, “Fallen flag freight cars.” Be sure to vote for your favorite and return to share you comments.
Thanks!
Drew Halverson
Hmmm…they’re all about the same, aren’t they? Some closer, some farther away, a couple with lots of graffiti. How do I decide?
Something (and I have no idea what) told me to vote for the Santa Fe refrigerated car…so I did. They’re all winners.
Tom in Nashville
I wasn’t going to vote the presentation shots didn’t show anything but run of the mill roster shots. Then I remembered that I made mistakes in the past by not enlarging the pics and looking more closely…I don’t read the captions because I believe the picture has to tell the story based on the category. So lo and behold! Matt’s pic of the Seattle car actually shows a fading paint cover over an old Penn Central logo! So, yeah, this was different, worth a vote for sure.
Henry wrote: “Matt’s pic of the Seattle car actually shows a fading paint cover over an old Penn Central logo!”
Really? I looked very hard and didn’t see anything like that…and rather suspect the NC part of the SNC logo is what may have been mistaken for an old fading PC squiggle.
Tom in Nashville
They all had their merit. But my marine interest tipped the day to the Seattle & North Coast by Matt. [:S]
I went with that twin-stacked green one that Matt found…don’t know how seaworthy it is, though.
Seriously, there’s no Penn Central heritage in that car–it was built by Pullman Standard in May or June of 1980 (well after PC’s demise) for the Seattle & North Coast (as SNCT 1262). After that, it went to SBD (and probably CSXT) 162205, then BN 223006, and finally CIC 8026 (that’s the Cedar Rapids & Iowa City).
Alex’s ITLX covered hopper began life as MILW 101552, built by Pullman Standard in July or August of 1975. One can see the “52” peeking out to the right of the current number. The rest I got from scanning the ACI label (props for keeping it in focus!)!
As for Elrond, if SFRD stood for Santa Fe Refrigerator Department at some point, what about SFRC? or SFRE? or SFRA, SFRB, SFRF, SFRM, or SFRP? They all existed in the late 1960s and many into the 70s. I suspect that these just became codes by which types of reefers were identified, much like TTX uses a whole alphabet-load of reporting marks to distinguish different types of cars, and like UP uses ARMN for its reefers.