Currently, the Pullman Troop Sleeper at our museum is being refurbished. Included is a new coat of exterior paint. The members doing the work are sanding rough spots and fixing various dings and rust holes. When the car was declared surplus, Pullman apparently sold it to the Wabash Railroad where it was put into maintenance of way service and given road number 5719. We have found evidence of the yellow paint that the Wabash used on their MofW equipment. After the railroad was merged into the Norfolk & Western, the car was renumbered 565719 and repainted into the N&W's dark green MofW paint. What is curious is that the folks doing the exterior work, have also found an orange paint layer under the Wabash yellow. A simple question here; did the Wabash first use orange paint for their MofW equipment, and later switch to yellow? If not, I can't quite fathom why the car once wore orange.

Any info and/or ideas are welcome. Thanks.

Les Beckman (Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum/North Judson, Indiana)

Possibly red lead primer? It is bright orange and was fairly common as a metal primer.

In modern day, virtually all MoW equipment is yellow or orange, generally tracking close to the official safety yellow and safety orange. I would not imagine green MoW equipment unless a) you wished to lose it amongst the underbrush, or b) it was such that it was usually handled well away from active work and active trains, e.g. camp cars.

The camp car I know most about is the Emerald Vale, which was orange, however, that was more likely because orange was the Ann Arbor's corporate color of the time, being a subsidiary of DT&I.

So there you go, there's a case for yellow and orange and corporate colors.

Erie used Pullman Green for MOW and wreck train cars, cranes were black. NYNH&H used bright red for the cars, cranes were black. PRR used a light gray for many years, then switched to yellow in the mid 1950s. NYC used freight car red. B&M used a dark maroon for the wreck train cars.

Howard P.

Any chance the car came by way of the CB&Q? The Burlington had troop cars converted to mail storage cars, and used orange on MOW cars in the transition era.

"Red lead" primer wouldn't surprise me, either, especially if the orange only shows in spots.