Recently, the Monticello Railway Museum has sanded and power washed their Illinois Central Gulf covered hopper #100040 shown here:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=4194477

MRM member Dennis Slone was instrumental in saving the car from being scrapped. The plan now is to repaint it into its original Gulf, Mobile & Ohio gray paint and lettering. The museum is looking for the actual shade of paint used. Also, the original style lettering diagram. It appears that the car is one that the GM&O purchased from PS in 1953 in one of these two lots:

GM&O #80050-80099 Lot # 8110 in March
GM&O #80100-80149 Lot # 8135 in October

Thus far, the original GM&O number of the car has not been discovered. Any help with the correct shade of gray paint, the lettering diagram and the GM&O car number, would be greatly appreciated.

Les

I think the correct number slot is 66xxx, the 80xxx number slot are three bay PS-1 hoppers.

Corrected, here is an 80xxx slot car:

PMC -

Thanks for your input, and the two photos of GM&O covered hoppers. However, here is another one:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=3563170

As you can see, this photo shows a two bay covered hopper car numbered 80601. This is from a different series of cars, built by AC&F in 1949 and numbered GM&O 80500-80649. I didn't include that series of cars (and another PS series numbered GM&O 80000-80049) because both of those series of two bay covered hoppers were built in the late 1940's and MRM shows on their printed roster that their car was built in 1953. So where did I get my information? From an internet website (must be true then...right?) entitled "railgoat". Maybe his site is in error, but it seems to have a pretty good roster of GM&O freight cars. Incidentally, that website says that the three bay covered hoppers started with GM&O number 80700 and went up from there. The two bay covered hopper photo you show is for GM&O 66796. And it shows the car not in gray, but in freight car red. Could this have been a renumbering, perhaps when these cars might have been downgraded into company service? I don't know; I can't quite read all of the lettering on the car. And, as you can tell, I am far from an expert on GM&O freight cars!

Well, we seem to have a slight disagreement about the GM&O numbering. Hopefully someone can straighten it out so that the boys at Monticello can get the car painted, lettered and numbered correctly.

Les

Les, you are right, it is rather confusing. The caption for the 66796 I posted says it is a sand car, which would be revenue rather than MOW. It could be that GM&O numbered their cars according to use rather than type. Looking at this list of GM&O hoppers it appears that ACF centerflo's were mixed in with your car and three bay PS-1s in the 80xxx and above series: http://rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=GMO&cid=4

I have yet to find a master list of ICG freight cars and what their past numbers were.

Sand service could mean they were in company service at the time. The P&WV rostered two covered hoppers (#P433 and #P434) retired from regular revenue service that were used strictly for sand loading only.

PMC and Eric -

Thanks for your comments. I did a bit of checking and found this page on the net:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rslist ... GMO&Page=2

If you scroll down and check the 66xxx series of GM&O numbers, you'll note that all of these cars seem to be used in company service. Some examples:

#66160 - tank car
#66630 - old coach
#66949 - box car

My thinking then is that the covered hopper pictured (GM&O 66796) is in company sand service, probably transporting sand for locomotives.

Doesn't help with paint and lettering for the Monticello Railway Museum covered hopper, but seems to at least solve the question about numbering.

Les

Les,

If you're looking to recreate the as-built appearance, you might also want to try chasing down the PS factory colors. Seems like PS painted a lot of covered hoppers the same shade of light gray with black lettering for different customers and it's highly possible it was an "off-the-shelf" color. Don't obsess over an exact match as there can be slight difference between batches mixed.

It might be worth contacting Ted Anderson of the Pullman Library at IRM. These are right in the time period where they have the "correspondence files" for new car orders, which contain a lot more information than is on the drawings. While it's best to have the builder's lot number when starting the search, the library can search by railroad and date, and I don't suppose little GM&O was buying all that many covered hoppers.

Contact Info: http://www.irm.org/pullmanlibrary/index.html

Dennis -

Good idea, and one I hadn't thought of. MRM contacted the GM&O Historical Society and never heard back from them. Perhaps indicating that they had no info. The builders lot numbers for the cars built by Pullman-Standard in 1953 are known.

Les

I think Monticello has already been in touch with the Pullman Library. IRM does have the files on the two batches of hopper cars cited, but as far as I know, no lettering drawings or builder's photos.