Home Page › Forums › Prototype and Historical › MP/T&P Memorabilia › Sunshine Special state flowers plate with Texas at 12 o’clock › Reply To: Sunshine Special state flowers plate with Texas at 12 o’clock
More information continues to gradually surface on MP service plates. Concerning the Texas plates in general. there seems to be a number of plates which were purchased in 1947, but I have also seen one example which was purchased in 1946 or earlier. The Texas plates were produced by rotating the decal on the border of the plate so that Texas was at the top, all state flowers maintained their prior relationship to adjacent flowers, so this was not a new decal, just positioned differently.
The Texas Eagle started in August 1948, and the diesel service plates did not arrive until circa August 1949, per a brief note in the August 1949 MP Magazine. Therefore, were the 1947 “Texas” plates ordered for the Texas Eagle? Anecdotal information continues to suggest that these Texas plates were first ordered for the Texas Centennial in 1936. Does anyone have any information or photos which confirm that possibility? Does anyone have a Texas plate which is backstamped for Texas & Pacific or, more unlikely, front marked under the steam locomotive with Texas & Pacific Railway replacing Missouri Pacific Lines?
One of the china books (McIntyre) states that the Texas plates lacked the outside pinstripes. Possibly so on some batch, but the only ones I have seen do have the outside pinstripes, basically the same as the plates with Missouri on the top. If you have a Texas plate, please take a look at the back and report the date code here (we can decipher the date code if you do not have a Syracuse China reference). Perhaps if we get a larger sample size of these plates, some of these mysteries can be solved.
Bill Pollard
[attachment=1:2h8i6qgh]Texas-1.jpg[/attachment:2h8i6qgh]
[attachment=0:2h8i6qgh]2-codes.jpg[/attachment:2h8i6qgh]
