Pan Am Railways Paint Scheme (boxcars, etc.)

They were painted by Ebenezer Railcar of New York before delivery.

Spotted a block of 4 or 5 boxes at Rigby yesterday with brand new dark blue paint schemes, along with BM 3000 series reporting marks ! No PanAm logo !

Did they have the words "Pan Am Railways" anywhere on them? Or JUST reporting marks and nothing else?

Bulkheadflat wrote:Spotted a block of 4 or 5 boxes at Rigby yesterday with brand new dark blue paint schemes, along with BM 3000 series reporting marks ! No PanAm logo !

Did it look anything like the PAR Dip Blue jobs the locomotives are getting?

2 blue dip PAR boxcars were in Beacon Park Friday.

Photo by Bob Renaud of one of the repainted BM 3200 series boxcars:

http://www.pbase.com/trainmanbr/image/143342648


Based on the font, and the lack of a Waterville Shops stencil, I suspect these were painted by an outside company (perhaps GE Railcar?).

To me, this is really strange...

Go searching and try and find a single B&M boxcar that has been repainted into the PAR scheme. From everything I could find on NE Rail photo they simply don't exist.

All of the PAR repainted boxcars have MEC reporting marks.

I do not know what the significance of this is but sending out a car for repaint and deliberately leaving your stencil/name off the car is really strange to me.

It almost makes me wonder if the PAS transaction was legally between the B&M and NS only.

Historically, I guess you could say by now, PAR's preference has been to repaint boxcars in what could almost be described as a 70s style manner, with multiple colors, large logos and full roadnames. Still, it's not at all rare nowadays (and undoubtedly far cheaper) to give a car a single color "dip job" with only the necessary markings. At least these aren't mineral red - I think the car looks sharp in that dark blue!

Of course, give it a day or two until the "lil dahlins" and their paint cans find it...

Thanks to Bob Renaud for posting the photo!

Model railroaders often call freight cars like this, with no name and no herald, "plain Janes". A great many tank cars, especially those carrying hazardous materials, have been painted this way in recent decades, partly because shippers don't want their names to show up in photos of accidents. Many other kinds of freight cars have also received this kind of minimal lettering in recent years, probably mostly in an effort to save money. Here are a very few of the many reporting marks I don't think I've seen lately with any name or herald: AOK, CLE, GMRC, LW, MSDR, TR, YKR.

I think I HAVE seen at least one boxcar in the full Pan Am Railways paint scheme with name and herald that had BM reporting marks. Unfortunately, it would take a great deal of searching for me to retrieve its car number.

I think ya'll are reading into this too much. It's cheaper to paint something in one color without huge stenciling. Someone else could have been able to paint them cheaper than Waterville too. I will see what I can find.

Boxcars in Pan Am paint do exist with B&M Reporting marks:
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2432/3588 ... ff6b_m.jpg

newpylong wrote:I think ya'll are reading into this too much. It's cheaper to paint something in one color without huge stenciling. Someone else could have been able to paint them cheaper than Waterville too. I will see what I can find.

Boxcars in Pan Am paint do exist with B&M Reporting marks:
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2432/3588 ... ff6b_m.jpg

Thanks for clarifying this. I was starting to wonder.......

Looking much sharper with the classic Pan Am wordmark:

http://photos.nerail.org/s/?p=201888

MEC407 wrote:Looking much sharper with the classic Pan Am wordmark:

http://photos.nerail.org/s/?p=201888

Indeed!

I'm a little surprised to see that I thought they were getting away from it.

Steve Wagner wrote:Here are a very few of the many reporting marks I don't think I've seen lately with any name or herald: AOK, CLE, GMRC, LW, MSDR, TR, YKR.

I think LW, AOK, and YKR are owned by Sappi. Almost all of the LW especially have a little blue Sappi logo on them.

deeptrax wrote:

Steve Wagner wrote:Here are a very few of the many reporting marks I don't think I've seen lately with any name or herald: AOK, CLE, GMRC, LW, MSDR, TR, YKR.

I think LW, AOK, and YKR are owned by Sappi. Almost all of the LW especially have a little blue Sappi logo on them.

AOK is the Arkansas and Oklahoma, The others are mostly or all real railroads as well. Some railroads will lease their marks to car companies like GE Rail Services who uses the GMRC mark. Small railroads make a consistent reliable fee for the use of their marks, and car companies get a mark to use without having to file paperwork and maintain files on their own marks.

Im pretty sure those sappi logos are just stickers as i see them peeling off all the time.