Any resource websites for modern/lease/patched freight cars?

[F-UnitMad]

Just wondering if there are any decent websites or resources out there for photos of modern freight cars that are patched with 'stencil' numbers, either for the original owning Railroad, or in 'Ex-ABC Railroad' liveries but patched for current Lease owners?

That is, beyond the usual 'go to' websites rrpicturearchives.com and railcarphotos.com which to be honest I don't find too helpful, unless I'm not searching them right - for one thing I'm not sure even what Lease companies are out there & what their reporting marks are.

As an example, I have this Weaver boxcar in U.P. Yellow. I'd like to update it to circa. 2000's condition. It's number - or anything close - doesn't appear on either of the above websites, it may be a "Foobie". Even searching for "Ex-Union Pacific boxcar" doesn't help. So how can I find out what a boxcar in that livery might look like more recently and what reporting marks it might have?? I accept a lot of it might well be covered in graffiti these days!!

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

 

[298]

First of all I'd look on Fallenflags for that number or similar:

 

https://rr-fallenflags.org/up/up-frt.html

 

Unfortunately that doesn't work for patch renumberings if you don't know the new code. I suppose those RPM guys over there will take a photo of something they've actually seen, but another option might be to look to see if that livery has been produced in patched form by a model company and search for others with the same code.

[298]

BKTY are covered in this album, it's a game to work out the original owner: https://www.flickr.com/photos/96383454@N00/albums/72157706717818305/

[F-UnitMad]

21 minutes ago, 298 said:

I'd look on Fallenflags for that number or similar:

 

https://rr-fallenflags.org/up/up-frt.html

That's actually come up with a very close number, 169872...

But the boxcar looks nothing like mine, of course, never mind the lettering!! 🙄🤦‍♂️🤯

[pH]

27 minutes ago, F-UnitMad said:

That's actually come up with a very close number, 169872...

But the boxcar looks nothing like mine, of course, never mind the lettering!! 🙄🤦‍♂️🤯

I’m inclined to think it’s a “foobie”. 
 

Looking on “fallen flags” and “rrpicturearchives” for Union Pacific XM  boxcars with numbers round about the number on that model, I can’t see any with door arrangements like the model.

[F-UnitMad]

6 minutes ago, pH said:

Looking on “fallen flags” and “rrpicturearchives” for Union Pacific XM  boxcars with numbers round about the number on that model, I can’t see any with door arrangements like the model.

Agreed.

So given the car can be patched, and therefore the number changed, how to go about finding examples of that livery and/or boxcar type, rather than searching the number series? 🤯🤦‍♂️ 

[doctor quinn]

UP had some ex-Railbox cars that are a close match but don't seem to have had a repaint http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=4078578

 

 To answer your query, the only way I've managed to come up with a prototypical patch outcomes to start from the road that acquired the car and figure out what the old livery was. Search Flickr may come up with something 

 

Edited April 21 by doctor quinn
Add info

[pH]

Sorry - I can’t think of any way of doing that. It’s a pity that “rrpicturearchives” doesn’t trace the movement of rolling stock the way it traces locomotives, though I know that would need a massive effort. And how many people would need that ability (present company excepted? 😐).

[dave1905]

Part of it is it would be a HUGE project. Railroads don't track how they paint their cars to begin with.  There is no real record that says car ABCD 12345 has paint scheme 327-A on it.

 

Railroad cars aren't sequentially renumbered.  If a railroad owns 500 of a class of cars and rebuilds and renumbers 200 of them, it doesn't rebuild and renumber them in sequential order.  It routes the first 200 cars of that class it can get its hands on to the shop and the shop works them as they come in and will renumber them in the order they go out.

 

Basically you just have to find a picture.

 

One other consideration is age.  The car in the picture was new in 1976.  That would make it 40 years old in 2016.  In earlier eras freight cars were limited to 40 years, that was extended to 50 years and in certain cases a class of cars can be extended to 65 years.

[alastairb]

Not sure how you would find photos of that particular UP boxcar with patched reporting marks. However might be worth a trawl through http://freight.railfan.ca/ An amazing collection of North American railcar photos (not just Canadian roads). It is organized by railroad / reporting marks, but there are plenty of patched railcars.

Edited April 23 by alastairb
Typo

[Luigi Taveri]

Hi F-U

I'd also suggest railcarphotos.com as well?  You need to sign up as a member to get access to the resource but there's no catches with it.  You'll get a flavour for it from the home page anyway.  The search menu is immense!

 

Hth?

Foxy

[F-UnitMad]

1 hour ago, Luigi Taveri said:

I'd also suggest railcarphotos.com as well? 

Hi, thanks, yes I did mention them in my opening post, & I am signed up there. 😉👍

As like rrpicturearchives, they are amazing resources, but I just find them difficult to search when it comes to re-numbered, patched or second owner cars.

 

I was reminded of this issue when a comment was posted recently on the Gateway layout of Chris Gilbert's :-

 

His patched boxcars are so up to date & believable, some of them obviously show traces of their previous owners (some look like ex 'per diem' boxcars), but it's how to find prototype photos like that I struggle with!! Or are they just made up ("foobies") anyway, like his loco? Fictional but entirely believable. What about the boxcars? I have no idea if they're proto-accurate but they sure look it, and I'd like any I do to at least look plausible.

i'm not insistent on total 100% accuracy when it comes to freight cars, and I know most of mine probably have errors, especially when it comes to numbers, like my UP above.

For example I have an MTH O scale Premier 50ft HiCube in Wisconsin Central livery -

Photographed straight out of the box, before conversion to 2-rail.

It has fantastic detail, and all numbers, symbols etc are in position and accurate - for a 50ft ordinary boxcar, not a HiCube!!! 🙄🙄🙄🤯🤯🤬🤬🤬 Why not just do things properly in the first place???!!! But for now at least, I'll live with it.

 

 

[Luigi Taveri]

Ah, so you did! 🙈

 

I have had reasonable success searching via the notes section (in my case for 'graffiti' (which I fully appreciate is defacing someone else's property but some of it is very skilled and gifted) and Pullman-Standard 2 bay covhop conversions - but not both together).  It obviously doesn't capture everything but it does start you down an interesting path.

 

Foxy

[dave1905]

IPD boxcars are really tough because they were scattered to the winds after the IPD program ended and were often patched or repainted multiple times by multiple owners in a short span of years.  As others have mentioned, finding pictures on the photo websites is probably the best option.

 

One story about repaints.  A leasing company acquired surplus engines from various railroads, patched them with leasing company reporting marks then long term leased them to the UP.  The UP ran them through a contract shop to install UP required equipment and repaint them into a UP paint and a UP number series.  While they were in the shop, the UP decided to renumber that series of engines, before they had been delivered to the UP.

 

In less than a year some of those engines had 4 numbers and two (or three) paint schemes.  The original owner, the patch/repaint leasing company, UP first number, UP second number.

 

Second repaint story.  A railroad stored a large number of 50 ft plain boxcars on a branch in cuts of a hundred or so.  It ended up that 2 NS boxcars got mixed up in that group.  The NS told the railroad they wanted their boxcars back.  The railroad said they weren't going to dig out 2 cars out of the middle of all those stored cars, but they would take the first two of their boxcars on the branch (same basic type) and renumber them to the NS series and give them to the NS.  Never heard if that is what they did, but that was a true scenario.

Edited April 25 by dave1905

[John M Upton]

With regards to trying to trace a real box car by starting with a model, a lot of box car models are based on generic one size fits all toolings, the likes of Athearn Blue Box etc for example and whilst the livery and number they put out (by the tens of thousands I reckon) may have actually existed in the 12 inches to the foot world, any resemblance to the prototype design probably stopped at the wheels...

[F-UnitMad]

3 hours ago, John M Upton said:

a lot of box car models are based on generic one size fits all toolings, 

Oh undoubtedly, & it would be impractical for the big manufacturers to do otherwise, really. I have come to realise that tracing a real car from a model & the number on it doesn't always work, which is why I was asking (maybe not very clearly or succinctly) about tracing real cars by livery. As I've said, I'm not completely fixated on 100% accuracy when it comes to freight cars, but I would like my fleet to look something close to reality if possible, or at least plausible.

That's why, going back to that first U.P. car I posted, I'd like to find examples that are close to the livery (with, in this case, the "We can handle it" tag line") and the state they were in later in service, to see what I would need to patch out & a new reporting mark and/or number if a car changed owner. Even if it didn't change owner, I note a lot of cars seem to have a patch - either black or white, usually, with the original mark & number put on in 'stencil' form. I assume this might have been done during an upgrade of some sort, which didn't include a full repaint?

'Looking plausible in later service condition' is what I'm after, I suppose, which is similar to what these 'foobie' liveries attempt in the first place.

[John M Upton]

To be honest, I have never seen a photo of a real UP car bearing the 'We can handle it' line yet it has appeared on numerous different box car models.  I do wonder if it was applied to just one car for some sort of exhibition and the painting diagram with it on then got sent out by UP to all the model railroad manufacturers who have been pumping out countless models with it on ever since!

[doctor quinn]

1 hour ago, John M Upton said:

To be honest, I have never seen a photo of a real UP car bearing the 'We can handle it' line yet it has appeared on numerous different box car models.  I do wonder if it was applied to just one car for some sort of exhibition and the painting diagram with it on then got sent out by UP to all the model railroad manufacturers who have been pumping out countless models with it on ever since!

I thinks it's a later slogan but they did exist http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=5481875

 

I recall reading that UP painted cushion cars yellow and non-cushion cars brown

[F-UnitMad]

5 minutes ago, doctor quinn said:

I recall reading that UP painted cushion cars yellow and non-cushion cars brown

That's an interesting thing I didn't know.

[F-UnitMad]

Well, I've found one way to get round a U.P. boxcar that's a Foobie....

Buy one that isn't....

Well if it isn't entirely accurate, it's very very close....

 

I've also more easily found the sort of photo I'm after - okay it's obviously a different car design, and 100 numbers lower than my model, but shows the new patch number (still in UP ownership) plus the inevitable graffiti. Copying the 'removed' red UP lettering, that has left the original, clean paint showing, would be a big challenge.

Edited Tuesday at 01:34 by F-UnitMad