QRL&PCo Hoppers

[doctorwayne]

......do you have picture of CN gondolas when they were painted in black in the 30's. I ask because a friend has 2 of them and wants me to weather them. I don't think a lot survived in the 50's in black, but we like to fudge things a little bit. THey are from Walthers, built date is 1936. After 20 years in service and not repainted, I feel like they would have turned quite badly.

No prototype photos, Matt, but the lettering would have been as shown on the Westerfield car below, lettered with the correct decals from Westerfield. These 48'6" cars were built in several orders between 1933 and 1943 and the later ones were among the first new ones to be painted brown/red.



The first gondolas in boxcar red/mineral brown had the roadname spelled out on one line, in slightly larger letters. I used C-D-S set #5 part(a), meant for these first red/brown cars, but split and stacked the words to use them on this black Athearn gondola.


In 1958, CN went to even larger letters on gondolas, with "CANADIAN NATIONAL" on either one line or two, depending on the length of the car. Set #5(b) (comes as set #5, with versions (a) and (b) included) does the two-line version (on a red/brown car, of course), while set #556 is for the one-line version on longer cars.
For drop-bottom GS-style gondolas, C-D-S set #559 includes parts a, b, c, and d and will do the large or small letters for both 36' and 40' cars.

Wayne