Nostalgia & History > Some serious Santa Fe silver!

Don’t look too close, the paint fumes might getcha...

1. AT&SF 200107 sits down in Pauline in south Topeka, KS on February 25, 1966.
Original Kodachrome slide by William A. -Art- Gibson (WAG) Jr.

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels (santafe199)
Art Gibson (wag216)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/23 00:39 by santafe199.

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That's awesome. A modeler's delight.

What the hell is that! Never seen the like, but it is a conversation piece for sure! Cool shot.

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD

Roadjob Wrote: > ... What the hell is that! ...

(chuckling) I probably should have mentioned that this is a freshly-painted m.o.w. boxcar. Silver was the standard color all m.o.w. rolling stock. This car is no doubt just out of Topeka Shops, on its way down to Emporia for further forwarding somewhere in the system. Sure does catch your attention, eh??  :^)

Lance

If there were an award for the best-looking maintenance-of-way boxcar, this might easily win!
Bob

Neat shot!

RC Lundgren

Funny how , for years , I thought Santa Fe took a lot of time to repaint those. Until years later when you begin to see Ship and Travel and other old lettering start showing .

Posted from Android

Hi yo Silver!!   Great shot....somewhere I have a picture of an ATSF MOW wooden boxcar in silver....ATSF and UP liked that livery for there MOW cars it seems.

The 'silver dip' was pretty standard on all MOW stuff; old passenger cars, all manner of retired freight cars, etc.    I remember riding on ATSF in the 60's and 70's and you'd spot old work equipment like that at about every yard out in the boondocks.    Boxcars, flats, all kinds of converted stuff, boom tenders, tank cars, oddballs.  And yeah, the ENTIRE car got the treatment, usually trucks and all.

Because 'most' of that work equipment didn't get that many miles on it (and none at speed), the paint kind of died a slow death rather than typical freight car weathering.

What was strange was that a lot of company-owned 'freight' cars like the tank car fleet for water, lube oil, diesel fuel, etc didn't get it, the rotary snowplow didn't get it, other oddballs didn't like the wreck cranes.  Yet if it was a water car assigned to a work train it did.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/22 07:08 by randgust.

That's the best looking silver MoW boxcar I've ever seen. The ones I saw were usually dirty silver. Very NICE catch by Art.

Larry

It was alway fun to see what the original paint looked like as this silver wore off.  Nice when it was fresh though.

Looks like even the wheels were painted silver, and the paint has quickly worn off the tread....

Stencil says Stores department loading.

Stores department cars were silver.

Posted from Android

mundo Wrote:
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> Stencil says Stores department loading.

Yes, but it has regular reporting marks. I wonder if any ever got away?

randgust Wrote:

> What was strange was that a lot of company-owned
> 'freight' cars like the tank car fleet for water,
> lube oil, diesel fuel, etc didn't get it

Santa Fe wasn't always consistent when it came to non-revenue equipment, but when you think about it, it's really not all that strange that cars in company service, but not strictly maintenance of way service, wouldn't get maintenance of way paint. 

> the rotary snowplow didn't get it, other oddballs didn't like the wreck cranes. 

Most Santa Fe roadway machinery didn't get solid silver paint.  Off hand, I can think of exactly one locomotive crane that got all-silver.  Otherwise, wrecking derricks, pile drivers, Jordan spreaders, the rotary, Burro cranes, track undercutters, ballast regulators, etc. by and large wore something other than solid silver.  Smaller machines were typically yellow in later years, while the big machines wore some variation of blue and yellow (and black and silver before that). 

santafe199 Wrote:

> This car is no doubt just out of Topeka Shops, on
> its way down to Emporia for further forwarding
> somewhere in the system.

Squinting down at the lettering at the bottom of that third panel from the left, I see what looks like WC followed by the month and year.  That means this shiny new paint job was a product of the West Wichita shops.

Evan_Werkema Wrote: > ... That means this shiny new paint job was a product of the West Wichita shops ...

Like I said: This car was NO DOUBT painted down in Wichita, them hustled up here to Pauline in order to fool as many casual observers as possible into thinking it was fresh out of Topeka Shops...

;^)