I am planning on modeling a freelanced set in 1989-1998 Richmond, Virgina area and I was wondering since my railroad will be purchasing some a portion of the RF&P and its rolling stock (Along with CSX) if it would be in style to patch out a few older freight cars with my railroads reporting marks and what not.
I know CSX Patched several RF&P Freight cars, but I was wondering if that was a rare occurrence and not the norm at the time?
Should I do likewise with some assorted freight cars I have?
O I would venture that the further back you go the more common it was. Probably due in part to the learning curve in steel car construction and paint formulation. The vast PRR fleet of X29 box cars had ends replaced, side sills patched and other repairs.
I think what the OP is talking about is seeing freight cars that had been built for railroad A and were bought used by railroad B, who hastily painted a “patch” over railroad A’s reporting marks and stenciled on their own reporting marks. Sometimes they would paint patches over the railroad name and herald too.
Eric N. Goodman talks about that in his review of the ExactRail Evans 5277 “Incentive Per Diem” boxcar in the July 2012 Model Railroad News (page 70). In the 1970’s, railroads found themselves to not have enough boxcars available, so the ICC put in the “Incentive Per Diem” rule which increased the money a railroad or leasing co. could get for having boxcars available for use. Because of this many railroads - some very small - built or leased large fleets of boxcars in the seventies to take advantage of this.
Later (IIRC in the mid/late 1980’s) the IPD practice was deemed to be illegal. This meant many railroads - particularly the smaller ones - could no longer afford to run the cars, so returned them to the companies they had leased them from. These companies often sold them to other railroads, who would repaint them into their railroad’s regular scheme, or “patch” them out just enough to meet ICC requirements showing who owned / operated the car.
I would say the OP’s chosen era was the high point of patched boxcars, many of them former per diem, but also many of them from the increasing number of fallen flags of that time frame. Rock Island alone accounted for lots of patch-outs.
I have read a lot of articles and opinion about the incentive per diem era. One opinion piece mentioned some Congressional hearings called at the request of shippers that basically alleged an inadequate number of boxcars when the reality was plenty of cars but rather a bunch of plugged yards and slow return of empties. I think there was also a craze among some investors for investing in freight cars due to some tax advantages that might have been more real than perceived. At any rate it was an interesting era for the freight car photographer.
Dave Nelson
Absolutely. Simple patches to change the reporting marks and number, and paint over the old railroad’s logo are and have been common. It’s a lot faster and cheaper than a full repaint of the car.
Plenty of examples of this that I’ve seen going back into the 1970s and 1960s and most likely long before that as well.
I don’t think the practice has ever been really more or less popular, but the bursting of the IPD bubble in the early 1980s created a huge glut of boxcars on the secondhand market, which certainly would create a lot more of these patched cars. Plus the Conrail merger happened a decade before in 1976, and CSX officially merged in 1982, so you’d be seeing lots of assorted CSX and CR patch-outs of predecessor roads, plus plenty of un-patched cars in their original reportings marks still.
Modern era, more cars are leased by the railroads than purchased outright, so instead of spending their entire lives on the railroad that bought them, they might get patched and re-marked within 10 to 20 years when the lease expires which also adds to the sea of patched cars out there. That makes a difference too, but this was also happening 40-50 years ago as well.
I don’t know when patching out was popular as such
But every time a railroad merges or scores some much needed stock from another railroad etc if the stock is good.
A quick splash of paint in the standard new owning RR color to cover the old markings followed by a stencil of the new markings all done into traffic
Doesn’t look particularly nice but works and gets the cars into traffic earning for the company
Flash new company paint job later.
Would be something different not often seen on a model railroad.
regards John
Absolutely. Simple patches to change the reporting marks and number, and paint over the old railroad’s logo are and have been common. It’s a lot faster and cheaper than a full repaint of the car.
I have seen sever “patch” cars that still displayed the previous owners herald in all its former glory.
When there’s a railroad merger, there’s hardly ever patched freight cars. They mostly just carry the same old reporting marks. But when a car receives a repaint, the car usually gets the reporting marks of the new “umbrella” railroad. So, with the old BN, you’d see cars running for years with GN, CB&Q, NP, SP&S reporting marks and paint. And you’d also see cars that came over from those previous roads that were painted BN with BN reporting marks. What was quite rare was a car in a previous railroad’s scheme but with BN reporting marks. There were some, but not many. And, I think, there were a few BN painted cars with reporting marks of the previous roads.
But when a car changes ownership, I believe the reporting marks are alway changed. The demise of the ROCK was not a merger, but a bankruptcy. So ROCK cars were patched awfully quickly with the new owners’ marks. And the same holds for cars that were re-leased.
So, for the OP, I would say that you would patch almost all (probably all) of your newly purchased cars. I know there were cars with RF&P reporting marks running at least until 2007, so you would also be running un-patched RF&P cars, too. But those would be cars not owned by your railroad.
Ed
I guess it really depends on the railroad. It’s true I’ve never seen a BNSF patched car. Plenty of BNSF, BN and ATSF (I even saw a pristine SLSF this spring) run together, cars only renumbered BNSF with a full repaint. CN has been repainting all sorts of former cars from IC and other asborbed roads, but not changing numbers or reporting marks. (This of course would never apply to secondhand cars - by absorbing those other railways CN now owns those marks.)
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=icg245349&o=ic
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=bcol100238&o=bcol
The Conrail and CSX mergers on the other hand created all sorts of interesting patched cars. And PC patched a lot of PRR and NYC cars as well without full repaints. I’ve also seen images of SAL and ACL cars patched for SCL, and of course CSX has plenty of patched cars in Chessie paint still. Here’s a bit of CSX’s colour:
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=csxt201598&o=csxt (LN)
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=csxt225721&o=csxt (B&O)
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=csxt227096&o=csxt (C&O)
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=csxt227685&o=csxt (C&O - Chessie)
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=
BRAKIE: You’re absolutely right. I should have inserted the word “sometimes” in there. [:)]
Well…painting over old reporting marks and/or old heralds has been going on for around 100 years. I have a photo taken in 1924 or 1925 of a LE&W boxcar that has had its NYC Lines herald painted over, and the new owner’s “Nickel Plate Road” slogan painted over it. No other lettering or reporting marks had been overpainted (and the car’s in the pre-1920 ARA/MCBA lettering standard, so it’s in need of a full repainting).
The NKP bought the LE&W in 1922, and formally merged with it in 1923. The LE&W reporting marks completely disappeared from the ORERs in 1929, so the process of painting several thousand cars only took a few years. My photo is evidence that the NKP took steps to IMMEDIATELY change the corporate branding of the LE&W far faster.
Here’s a couple of BN patch-outs–there aren’t many:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=165144
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2822083
The GN car was in MOW service.
And now for some of the more common patches on BN cars that BN bought or leased from outside the merger:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2648014
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2500234
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=286384
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2627305
And then there’s the BN patched Railboxes–you’re on your own there.
Ed
BN was pretty quick to add “patches” to locomotives after the merger, so that they had “BN” and the new road number. Of course, the engines were often painted by the same shops that they had already been painted in, so they weren’t always “patches” per se. Like a GN diesel would have the herald and road no. painted over in GN’s version of Pullman Green, and then “BN 12345” stenciled over that. Conversely, BN took it’s time with freight cars. I have pics I took at Northtown Yard of a ‘big sky blue’ GN boxcar still in full GN paint and lettering in 1990.
As noted, it’s important to remember when two roads merge, or one buys another, the ownership of the reporting marks go along too. So there’s no problem if the car keeps it’s original reporting marks. Of coruse if the car number duplicates another car the railroad might choose to change it.
In the late eighties - early nineties, Chicago & NorthWestern even bought some new cars and used CGW and MSTL reporting marks, for roads that they had bought in the sixties.
thanks Ed, I was asking this cause I have an Accurail FEC boxcar kit I thought would look pretty neat patched up for my rail. This answers my question of weather other railroads did this perfectly