Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Dirty Trucks

Victor Humphreys is cleaning years of rust and sludge from the "BR" truck sideframe.  That is the right hand side of the truck on the "B" end of the car.

Priming

And then when clean, Victor is busy imitating a contortionist as he proceeds to prime paint the truck.

Artwork

Here is the next round of lettering on the right side.  Two patterns are on the car side, and we are checking the placement of the General American logo.

Painting

Yes, that is me (Kirk took most of these pics), applying black lettering enamel to the car.

Finished For the Day

And here is the added lettering finished on Sunday.  You will note a three inch "R" near the plug door.  That denotes the right hand side of the car.  Many specialty cars, such as reefers, had shipping instructions as to which door must be spotted next to the unloading ramp or plant door. 

Next see an "RB" to the right of the capacity line.  This is the AAR type code for our car.  You might suspect that this insulated boxcar would carry an "XMI" code, but ours apparently was classed "RB" for refrigerator, bunkerless.  This car has no provision for any refrigeration, ice or mechanical, in its present configuration.  But it was built as a refrigerator car before modifications, and thus continued to be classed with refrigerator cars.

Finally see the addition of lettering to the right of the "LT WT" line.  That shows the station name symbol and the date of the current re-weigh for this car.  If this represented the shop re-weigh as built or rebuilt, it would likely say "NEW" instead of "MIL", for Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  (GATC owned URTC and had a large shop in Milwaukee.)  And the date for when it was re-weighed.