Re: PC: Ex-Penn Central H54 in Colorado

[DougTblood@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 97-03-13 09:14:08 EST, you write:

> On Saturday March 12th, I found an ex-PC H54 hopper at BN's North Yard
>  in Fort Collins, Colorado.  The car's current reporting marks are NRLX,
>  #47356.  The car is Conrail brown with the Conrail lettering stenciled
>  out. The top 1/3 of the car's paint was so badly weathered, you could
>  see the "Penn Central" lettering and about 1/2 of the worm showing
>  through. The car used to be grey with black PC markings.

I have a friend who works for Springfield Terminal/Guilford as a freight
clerk.
A few years ago he was working in the yard in Boston doing a physical
check of the cars in the yard versus the yard report ( walking the yard
checking the numbers) and he found one car that wasn't on the report,
a PC covered hopper. He was also missing a conrail car. Took him a 
while before he realized that the two cars were one and the same.
On one side the car  was Penn Central green; the opposite side was Conrail 
brown. :^) It was a covered hopper BTW. Of course if george hadn't been
so hung up  on looking at the reporting marks, who would've realized that
the numbers were the same for both reporting marks.....

I've thought of modeling this but figure I'd take too much crap from
nitpickers.
Although I have modeled two CR covered hoppers that have PRR and EL
markings bleeding through. The PRR car had large vertical areas where
the CR paint had come off rather cleanly right down to the original paint;
looked like someone had masked off the car when painting it! My guess is
they used a chemical cleaner prior to painting and didn't properly wash it
off before painting. Whatever they used for the CR lettering stayed on, so
you have both a PRR keystone and a CR can opener on the same car.The 
El car was just badly chalked and the old markings showed through.... 

I have jpgs of both cars ( although the CR-EL jpg isn't very good and doesn't
really show up as well as the original); ask and ye shall receive!

A lot of the early conrail repaints of covered hoppers were really badly done
and there were a lot of bleeders. they also didn't seem to have any idea of
what the official scheme was and there were a lot of rather interesting
variations
in placement of lettering and style used.

Doug Trueblood
side and Conrail Brown on the other