Model Railroading > BN(SF) 40’ COIL CARe car (Part 2) – Road Number Jumble

This is Part 2 of a series on the BN(SF) COIL CARe car project.  (Part 1 was posted earlier.)
 
After a railroad merger, some paint company is going to be very happy; because the railroad’s marketing folks are going to want all of the equipment of the acquired railroad repainted.  The BNSF merger was a jackpot since BN as well as SF locomotives and rolling stock were repainted.
 
Ideally the BN road numbers could be the same when repainted into BNSF colors.  However, BNSF wanted the 40’ COIL CARe cars to be renumbered to be within a block of road numbers BNSF designated for coil cars.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t a block of BNSF numbers available to accommodate them all as one contiguous block.  Consequently, they were assigned numbers that jumped around a bit to fill-in the gaps between the BNSF road numbers already assigned to other coil cars. 
 
These are the ranges of road numbers for the 40’ COIL CARe car repaints:
   BNSF 529006 thru 529720
   BNSF 534229 thru 534344
   BNSF 535009 thru 535213
 
Again, these are based on prototype photos, so the ranges could extend beyond those listed.  However, given the chaotic nature of the range assignments, it is important to NOT assume.
 
Trying to repaint cars that are “in the wild” is like trying to herd cats.  Cars need to be taken out of service to be repainted, and yet customers need their loads delivered on time.  There must have been multiple shops/subcontractors tasked with repainting the COIL CARe cars, because the lettering schemes are not consistent.
 
The lettering for the repaints fall into 5 basic groups:
   Original BN – Very close match to the “as delivered” BN lettering, but instead of BN Green they are BNSF Brown.
   Non-XL - PacMan logo with a lone “e” (minus the “XL”) to indicate the 40’ version.   
   BNSF Swoosh - This incorporated the new BNSF logo.
   Mislabeled as XL - The “XL” designation is for the 50’ version.  This unfortunate “typo” is a source of confusion. 
   Oddballs - These were either BNSF patch jobs on BN Green cars, non-standard lettering scheme on a brown car, or a BN Green car that was never patched and escaped the paint booth entirely.
 
To add to the jumble, the road numbers are not assigned in blocks per lettering scheme.  For example, if the COIL CARe cars are lined up in numerical order by road number, there might be a few cars with the Original BN lettering, then a BNSF Swoosh, followed by a Mislabeled XL, etc.  Initially I was expecting nice clean groups of each lettering scheme being a contiguous block of road numbers, but quickly realized it was all over the map.
 
If the fear is a unit train of COIL CARe cars will be boring because all the cars will look the same, fear not!  There will be PLENTY of variety from which to choose.  :-D
 
Dave

---

---

---