I am in need of a source of photos or diagrams for standard GATX tank car stencilling practice for the early 1960s. If anyone can get me pointed in the right direction I would appreciate it. I have found information on more recent practice (c.1980s) but need to determine if there were differences in standard practice for the GATX lease fleet in 1963-1964. Thanks for your assistance.

We have used a lot of dog work to try to research out specific cars when painting and re-lettering. If there are even faint remnants of the original paint that is often one of the best clues. Then look all over on the web for old pictures, - not always easy to find but an amazing amount of stuff out there. Maybe post a question to one of the model railroad sites like Steam Era Freight cars (too old for you?) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/STMFC/


GATX is still in business and they have supplied some info to us in the past, and you at least have a chance if you are talking about one of their own lettered GATX cars. Sorry I cannot give you a specific contact - the guy who did that for us is out of town for a while.

Bob Kutella

I suppose I could have provided a bit more info. The car was built in April, 1963, but has all the markings currently required for service, such as consolidated stencil, emergency contact phone number, etc. Since the museum's collection cutoff date is 1970, I need information to return the car to its appearance sometime between construction in 1963 and maybe 1969. We are trying to keep everything representative of in-service equipment between 1930 and 1970, dependant upon when the piece was built, when it was in service locally, what kind of significant external appearance changes have been made and would be too costly or complex to revert, etc. I have already removed the AEI tags and mounting plates, but I don't want to do anything else until I have some good information on GATX past practice.

If you can pass along a contact name and number in a private e-mail to ssyfrett@bellsouth.net when your guy returns, I would appreciate it. Right now I intend to only pressure wash the car. It will be several months before we can consider a repaint, but I'd like to have everything ready to go and in the project file when we decide to do it. Meanwhile I will continue the web search.

Thanks.