For the preservation jury: I will be painting my Southern Pacific C-30-6 caboose soon. It will wear it's "as retired" paint scheme of boxcar red with Daylight orange bays and car ends. This car retains it's original roofwalk and end ladders. My issue is this: As painted by the SP, the roof was boxcar red. The roof is galvanized. I'm tempted to, instead of painting the roof, cover it with a silver roof coating. That way I could re-mop the roof to refresh the protection without repainting. (The car does not live under cover) Now, I'll say this, I would generally call myself a purist (my car will have PAINTED exterior lettering- no stickers here!) , and I wouldn't even consider this roof coating idea given it's deviation from the way the car was painted originally, except for the fact that later C-40 series cars were delivered with unpainted galvanized (a.k.a. silverish) roofs. While no C-30 cars were ever painted this way, it's not a totally foreign look. Considering that most people seeing the car will do so from the ground, do I give a little on the purity, in the name of overall maintenance of the car? Is this a "socially responsible" compromise to consider? I know it's "only" a caboose, and there are plenty of bay windows preserved. But this one is mine, and how it turns out matters to me.

I greatly respect the viewpoints expressed in this forum, and appreciate your thoughts. For a totally non-comercial website that I pay for myself, check out SP1353.com to check on progress.

NPaul,

ease of maintaince has a lot going for it.

iam glad to hear that you have lettered the car it seems that when a car is in private hands the first thing to go is the lettering.

The poor things look terrible without their letters and numbers.

I know of one so called museum that has not lettered their two caboosesfor so long that nobody there even knows what the numbers are!

Ted Miles