Early variations in Jenks blue passenger cars

[benjamintickell53]

Originally posted beginning in July 2007 Mopac Yahoo Group

Congratulations to Ed Hawkins for a exceptionally fine double-issue of the Eagle covering the ACF Baggage Express cars and MP single-sheath box cars. Thank you Carson Houston for the detailed research that went into your Baggage Car article! What a great source of information. I was especially intrigued by the number of variations in paint schemes in the 1962-1965 era. Apparently solid dark-Eagle blue was not the first simplified paint scheme. Wow, solid blue doors on blue-gray cars, no stripes on the bottom sill; what a great opportunity for the sixties era modeler.

Car 736 ex-4156 really caught my eye. Look at the bottom of page 25. To me the car does not look like it is painted in dark-Eagle blue, but rather original Eagle blue. There’s really now way to tell, but I’ll let my intuition have it’s say. Now look at the letter board; the stencils are in extended Railroad Roman, just like the all Eagle cars, but the word “Lines” has been dropped and the spacing now matches the style used in 1925. I was curious about the number 736. Note that it is in the new standard sans-serif font, not Railroad Roman, located on the right side of the car.. If you look closely at the center of the car, between the doors, you can see a small rectangle of blue paint covering where the car number was previously located. Could it be that the car was painted solid blue with Railroad Roman lettering and the 4156 car number in the center? Has anyone seen any photographs of solid blue cars with their original numbers? (I know a few diesel photos exist). What an incredible photo!

Dick Ryker

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I would like to second Dick Ryker’s comments about the exceptional quality of the latest Eagle. The entire issue is great, and Carson Houston’s baggage car article is a wealth of information that no doubt represents many hours of research and contributions from a lot of people. The article is really interesting railroad history compiled in an excellent format.

My attention was also attracted to baggage car 736 (pg 25) with the Missouri Pacific lettering in all blue scheme, but with no Scotchlite buzzsaw. I have a photo of grill coach 571 on train No. 8 at Little Rock, ca. 1965, that is the only other car I’ve ever seen with this pre-scotchlite scheme and lettering. How many such cars existed before the modification to the more familiar blue scheme?

Bill Pollard

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[attachment=0:1bf79bti]MP_571_LR_8-65.jpg[/attachment:1bf79bti]

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A year or so ago, there was a brief discussion of the all-blue MP passenger cars with silver “Missouri Pacific” letterboard lettering, with no Scotchlite white stripe and no buzzsaw (see above messages from July 2007). At that time, I uploaded a view of grill coach 571 showing one example, and the Spring-Summer 2007 Eagle (p25) has a color photo of baggage car 736 in the same scheme.

Photos exist of coach 825 and baggage 4224, still in “wet paint” at Sedalia on July 9, 1962. As of this relatively early date, both cars retained their old numbers and railroad roman style numerals, but were painted in the standard Jenks scheme with the white Scotchlite stripe and centered buzzsaw.

How many cars got the earlier all blue paint with Missouri Pacific lettering, beyond the two examples, 571 and 736, noted above?

Bill Pollard

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