Re: PC: X-72A Question

[DougTblood@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 4/17/99 10:42:14 PM EST, PCRR4LIFE -AT- webtv.net writes:

<< I would say green by the pics I have seen, couldn`t see why would be
 painted silver. >>

The roofs of freight cars are galvanised steel, which is flat silver in color.
Once they stopped putting running boards ( or roofwalks) on cars they
generally didn't bother to paint the roofs since the paint didn't adhere that 
well anyway and I guess since nobody would be up there to look at it :^).
In the days when most boxcars were brown it probably didn't matter 
anyway since as the paint came off the roofs would weather to almost
the same color anyway it wasn't as noticable. But generally since the late
sixties the drill was to paint the sides and leave the roof alone except for
whatever overspray occurred during the painting process. But you're right,
they didn't paint them silver, it's only us modelers who actually paint 
them...

As for X72's one of the dubious hallmarks of these cars were their rather
notorious ability to show rust stains on the sides which I guess is a mostly
due to their light color as Conrail painted 72's don't show the stains and
one would assume they haven;t *stopped* rusting with age y'know?
Anyway my X72 fleet has rusty colored roofs and some degree of steaking
on the sides, mostly from the upper tracks of the doors..

My favorite post PC X72 picture is one of a car that had large rusted 
areas where the PC lettering had been. Some car shop guy had taken the
words "remove the old lettering" a little too literally and sanded the 
lettering
off down to bare metal :^). I have tons of X72 pics and only one like that
so I guess the culprit was corrected pretty quickly!

Regards,

Doug Trueblood