In my post, I mentioned the help I had received from Hol Wagner. Here is his response to my query. RG
The six original Texas Zephyr sleeping cars were repainted by Pullman in 1949 in a scheme that involved a shade of imitation stainless steel (i.e., gray) paint with shadowlined fluting below the windows only.
Three additional sleepers had been added to the Texas Zephyr fleet in the postwar 1940s and also received the Pullman style shadowline paint in 1949. The six original cars were what was termed by Pullman as betterment cars, meaning they had been modernized
and had streamlined roofs, underbody skirting and full-width diaphragms. The three additional cars were unmodernized standard Pullman cars with clerestory roofs having air conditioning bubbles but no streamlined sheathing, and no underbody skirting and no
full-width diaphragms. When the cars were acquired by the railroads in 1949 the ownership of the nine Texas Zephyr cars was as follows:
C&S: Castle Crest, Lariat Crest, Spanish Range
FW&D: Castle Range, Spanish Crest, Lariat Range, Anaconda, Maximilian, Wadena
By the mid-1950s all nine of these cars had the shadowlining removed and were thus painted solid light gray, though a number of them eventually received a coat of roof sealant that made them appear
to be painted black. Despite searching dozens of photos of the Texas Zephyr, I have been unable to find and views showing either the original two-tone paint of the sleeping cars or the shadowline scheme.
As for the C&S-FW&D coaches and dining cars, there is only one known photo of any of them in shadowline paint, that one being C&S coach 554 (listed as 551 by the Denver Public Library). But, based
on the fact that the shadowlining was done in the 1949-50 period and removed by the mid-1950s, coach 554 was modernized in April 1951, at which time it received the shadowline paint. Coaches 549 and 550 were not modernized until December 1952, and coaches
551 and 553 not until April 1955, so they would have been painted solid aluminum with no shadowlining when mpdernized. Coach 552 was never modernized but was probably repainted aluminum. It was dismantled in August 1959 and I have seen no photos of it.
Similarly, FW&D coach 201 was modernized in March 1951 and thus was shadowlined at that time. Coaches 202 and 203 were modernized in July 1952 and coaches 204 and 205 in June 1954 and so likely never were shadowlined. Coach 206, like C&S 552, was never modernized
but definitely did get painted solid aluminum.
The situation is similar with the dining cars. C&S 706 was modernized in May 1950 and thus would have been shadowlined. FW&D 263 was converted into a dining-lounge car and modernized in 1950
and so was shadowlined. FW&D 265 was purchased from the Q (Q 175) November 11, 1949 and modernized in July 1950, and so would have received shadowlining. It was purchased to replace FW&D 264, a former C&S car built in 1906, purchased by the FW&D in 1935
and finally retired and converted into a bunk car in December 1949.
All of the modernization work on the C&S and FW&D coaches and dining cars was done at the Q Aurora shops, which were the only shops on the system equipped to do the shadowlining. And so it appears
that only two C&S-FW&D coaches and three diners received shadowlining, and they all had it painted over with plain aluminum paint in the mid-1950s.
And it would now appear at least one additional former Pullman sleeping car was shadowlined by the Burlington: CB&Q 669, seen in the slide now for sale on eBay.
I hope this helps straighten out the C&S and FW&D cars. From the shortage of photos of all the Burlington cars that were shadowlined, we may just be guessing on a good many of them.
Hol
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