I have some nice boxcars of SSW (e.g. 24095) and SP (699728). They have a nice modern design but I did not use them on my modern layout because SSW and Sp are longtime gone.
To my surprise I did find lots of photos of similar cars taken after the year 2000 where the cars are clearly signed as SSW and SP cars. The cars look well painted and the paint does not look like a leftover from the SSW and SP times.

Question:
Did UP simply keep the SSW and SP "label" and is still using them on their rolling stock? Why are they doing so?

Question:
Did UP simply keep the SSW and SP "label" and is still using them on their rolling stock? Why are they doing so?

Yes because they became the owners of the logos and road names after the merger/buyout...

Why?
Because its not feasible to repaint thousands of freight cars..However,most cars will be eventually repainted during a rebuild program or heavy shopping..

I am surprised. After that long time I expected at least a patch with a new "UP nnnnn" number to get all cars in the UP number system.
Thank you for the fast answer.

ps. I was thinking about some marketing reason. I understood UP was not so very welcome when they got SSW and SP. Therefore it might be a marketing idea to show the old names to old customers.

Some of those cars will probably remain in those schemes until retirement. There are still GN cars 40 years after the BN merger.

Back about 1998-2000 I still saw gons on the UP with WP markings. Freight cars just don't get repainted other than a patch for the new numbers unless they are rebuilt. If the numbers used on SP & SSW happen to fit into the UP numbering system without duplication, they might not even patch the numbers.

Reinhard, I took this photo in May 2010 and posted it in the Fallen Flags thread. Don't know if you saw it, but it definitely fits your topic.

Gary S Wrote:Reinhard, I took this photo in May 2010 and posted it in the Fallen Flags thread. Don't know if you saw it, but it definitely fits your topic.

Gary, yes that is exactly one of the boxcars I did not expect to be unchanged on the tracks in this days. But it is really good news. I can run a lot of "old" boxcars without any problems.

Was repainting much faster in the days of mostly wooden rolling stock? I ask because (admittedly a non-North-American example) I know that British rolling stock in pre-1923 schemes was rare by 1940 and gone shortly afterwards. Some other claims I've heard about DB (West Germany) and, closer to home, the Santa Fe suggest this was typical.

A few years ago I saw a Conrail unit coal train come through Cedar Hill Yard. Some of the hoppers were marked with "NYC", "PRR", "LNE" and even a couple of "PC" and "NH". Very few were marked "CR". Most you can tell were repainted and fresh markings were applied. Some had patches with the markings above. It semed out of place, but someone told me they do this to keep the class of hoppers seperate. Such as an H23 might have been marked PRR, and H30, would be marked NYC, and so and so on.

This confuses many people. Almost all cars with PRR and NYC reporting marks today aren't actual survivors. NS and CSX respectively created these subsidiaries as "paper railroads" to assign their CR equipment to. NH, whereas, is definitely real pre-1968.

Note when I mentioned GN cars, I was referring to patched but unrepainted cars.

CSX has a couple train sets of Bethgons running around with NYC reporting marks even though the cars never existed when the old New York Central did. It's simply an accounting trick to keep track of former Conrail cars.