I recently saw the following black & white photo of a covered hopper. I assume the lettering is white. Does anyone know what the body color is?
http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?o=frex&i=frex10105
I called the current elevators in Fremont, NE and none of them knew anything. I also contacted the library and the RR museum in town and no one responded.
Have to say it,“looks gray to me” 
Hmmmm. Interesting. I thought that it would be easy to find a photo on either the Railcar Photo or Railroad archive websites. No luck. Then I looked at several websites listing railroad reporting marks. Don’t find FREX listed anywhere there, either. (with the exception of the single car photo from the site where you got this picture). Must be a pirate railroad.
I’m really bad with colours but if I had to guess…
http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?o=ptlx&i=ptlx34914
FREX |
Fremont Elevator Co. |
added 7/1970; eliminated 10/1974 |
|---|
I would venture to say that Batman is about right in His choice…both cars were built by Pullman Standard…so I believe they would both share the same Tuscan/Zinc Chromate shade, both old Floquil colors. That would be my guess.
Take Care! [:D]
Frank
Since the pucture is dated 1970 an ORER from that era may shed some light. In all probability the owner dabbled in car ownership and bailed out. If I had to guess I would say it was green.
I am not sure what is meant by a “pirate railroad”, but it was fairly common in the 70s for early elevator hoppers to have their own reporting mark. Later the elevators switched to reporting marks such as PTLX or NAHX.
FREX was the reporting mark for Fremont Elevator Company. The following website has many of the discontinued reporting marks.
http://www.pwrr.org/rrm/index.html
I thought the hopper might be green but I would like to know for sure so that I can make one of them.
In looking at Jim Kincaid’s pictures (where the original B&W was taken) cars of that period for individual elevators were also painted an olive green or medium blue.
Rick J
Yeah, I woulda guessed some shade of green, too: think of the green C&NW used on some of their covered hoppers:
Wayne
Not a good assumption.
Pullman-Standard built and leased tons of privately owned or operated covered hoppers through the 1960s and 1970s in every colour imaginable including red, yellow, orange, green, blue, grey, white and even light pink.
Colour depends on the owner or lessee, there was no standardization from Pullman-Standard although the black ends contrasting with the primary body colour was a P-S signature.
A lot of the hoppers leased for service with Nebraska elevators with white lettering like your prototype were blue, while some were green, and a few were red.
Evans 4780 from Walthers
PS 4740s from Tangent.
Many (most?) of the Pullman cars I’ve seen in the green or red schemes have black underbodies and ends, but the prototype Fremont Elevator car looks to be the same color overall. However, many of the blue cars were from other builders like Evans or FMC, and it seems to me many of those were later. Greens varied from the more subdued color on the Tangent model above to a brighter BN-type color.
I didn’t assume anything. I used the word guess for a reason.[swg]
Me TOO! LOL…[;)][;)]
Take Care!
Frank
Most likely the company was bought by a larger company like ADM, I wasn’t able to find anything on it. Seems to me I’ve seen these cars before somewhere. Anyway, given the white lettering, it’s probably not gray. Freight car red would be a good guess, but as noted earlier, private cars like these could be almost any color at that time.
I’d put my money on red.
Its not an exact science, but I went around and gathered up some color photos of covered hoppers and converted them to black and white. The red ones ended up looking more like the color in the photo in question.
Like I said, not an exact science.