Why do they paint the cars like this?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I’m just curious. Why do they paint these cars a second color at the end, in this case red?

[link]http://www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATH94910[/link]

2

Indicates which end the rotary coupler is on for unloading. Two reds or two blacks togetjer means it cannot go through a rotary dumper

3

It’s to designate the end with the rotory coupler. It a train, all the colored bands are suppose to face the same way.

Nick

4

So the rotary dumper is used to unload the cars very fast when they arrive at the destination? Like in this web page?

[link]http://members.trainorders.com/pmack/dumper.htm[/link]

5

Not exactly…Some cars have rotary couplers on both ends.

6

Normally this indicates which end has the rotary coupler. Most cars only have the rotary coupler on one end(there are cars with rotary coupler on both ends). This marking makes it easy to see if the train is correctly assembled and can pass through a rotary car dumper. The ‘dual rotary coupler’ cars were popular when there were a lot of cabooses, and are still needed if the engines are coupled to the non-rotary end of the train(if no rotary, then the engines must be uncoupled and moved out of the way for the dumping of the first car).

Jim

7

Cars with dual rotory couplers usually have a band on each end. Or no bands at all.

Nick