Hello,
Years ago and now on EBAY I see colorful private company covered hoppers form Morton Salt, Planters, Kelloggs, Dutch, Ajax, Campbells soup.
Did companys really have these?
I have never seen any on real railroads.
Thanks,
Mark
Wow that brought back some memories as I had the Norton Salt, Campbell’s soup and Planters. As to whether they were real I couldn’t tell you but private company cars are not unheard of.
Fergie
According to the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER),there are quite a few private companies that have their own rail cars.Kelloggs is one of them,though as to if they are decorated like the ones you have seen on E-bay,I do not know. Borax I think is another,and maybe Campbells as well. Ajax,Old Dutch Cleanser,and Morton Salt are hard to say. As for the Planters…they " might " have some,though I am unsure about it. I do know that I have seen a few grain elevators that have the Planters logo on them.Hope this helps you out. I still have an old Tyco catalog that shows those particular cars,so I think I’ll take a look at my ORER and see what I come up with.[8D]
Freight car used to have more elaborate logos than they do today (most seem to have none today). I don’t know if these companies owned any but they may well have. Also, they could have been on long term lease.
I own some of these cars myself. Tyco made many brightly decorated cars with the logos of various companies on them. I think that in most cases it was to promote the company, rather than model an actual prototype. A lot of these companies actually paid Tyco to make these cars as a form of advertising. However, brightly coloured rolling stock with advertising did exist. Back in the days when wooden reefers were used, dozens of different companies elaborately painted them to advertise their products. These, logically enough, were called billboard reefers. I believe that most of the reefers that Tyco made were based on actual prototypes. I have an Athearn model of an Old Dutch Cleanser reefer that is decorated almost exactly the same as the Tyco hopper. I’ve seen models of this car by other manufacturers as well.
Come to think of it, though, I am familiar with some private owner hopper cars with prominent logos of major companies. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of light blue hopper cars with large Pillsbury logos on them. They’re pretty old and worn looking and have had their reporting marks changed, though, so I doubt that Pillsbury still owns them. I also occaisionally see a center-flow with a large French’s logo on it.
I’m gonna step out a bit on a limb, as I am working only from memory of Railway Ages and Model Railroader’s past (from libraries and the like), but in the late 1950s-1960s when Centerflows and AirFlows and Pressure-Diffs and other modern-era covered hoppers and tank-cars were being introduced, I think many companies (private owners) applied large, exciting, colorful schemes to promote their products and get their name out there. This seems to have petered out by the mid-70s (very ancedotal here, sorry), to be replaced by the very muted schemes we have today - the plain whites and greys of covered hoppers (supplied via GATX and other leasing companies), and the greys and blacks of tank cars (again, often supplied by GATX and other companies). Not to say that flashly schemes are still not applied here and there, but I believe that to be the exception (one reason, besides cost and potentially outdated logos: an article on Tank Farms in MR a few years ago stated that in the past companies proudly put there logo on the tanks, but nowadays this is becoming rare as no-one wants their name associated with potential disasters (just imagine a Newscast of a huge burning chemical tank displaying a “BP” logo prominently displayed, as opposed to the same tank with just letters like B-100 - you get the idea).
Of course, the Life-like/Tyco/Model Power (and Athearn was guity of this too) cars with flashly, cool looking paint designs were the norm in most stores by the 1970s (I remember buying some cars in Woolsworths!) because they were eye-candy, and this rather irked me because at this time (late 1970s) I knew most of the prototype freight cars had the muted designs .
At the time Tyco made these they were owned by Consolidated Foods and these were advertising for the various food branmds also owned by the company. As a general rule the government outlawed billboard advertising on rail cars in the 20’s although the regs have been relaxed somewhat since. Since railcars are subject to very heavy weathering many companies are reluctant to have a tarnished logo floating around in the public view.