MOW car paint & numbers were not a high priority with BN initially
for obvious reasons (i.e. revenue frt cars). However after a year
or two they started using chocolate brown for most wood car repaints
(& even some steel hwt's, tank cars & ex-steam tenders). In some
cases the entire car was painted with a new BN # & BN rpt'g marks or
in other cases they reprinted (but in new font) the predecessor road
initials & #'s. In a few cases, in haste, the painters blocked out
the area with the original road initials & #'s thus you would see a
chocolate brown car with a Q MOW orange 'block' with original black
lettering: CB&Q 2XXXXX. (BN uses 9000000 series). Pre-BN I never
saw a Q MoW car in brown. Wood equipment (ex-passenger & frt) was
generally painted safety orange and ex-steel equipment was silver
grey. (S.S. stayed stainless of course). The few exceptions were
some tank cars & of course cranes, derricks & tenders that were
painted black. A handful of flats in loco shop service were silver
as opposed to the usual orange along with a couple oddball wood box
cars in welding service, etc.
Going back further, Boxcar red was the MOW color into the early
1950's, lasting longer on Lines West than on Lines East.
It speaks well of the Q that as a road long committed to safety,
they were in the minority of RR's that began painting MOW equipment
safety orange - increasingly the visibility of cars that might have
men boarding or in some cases entire families. The copies of Q
internal correspondence that I have cite safety as the reason from
the switch to orange paint (that often faded to yellow or yellow-
orange). Other RR's used boxcar red, grey, silver & black right up
to current times. Gerald
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