Happy to announce that Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville (Monon) 40' steel boxcar arrived yesterday at HVRM. Brought in by truck, the car was unloaded at the east end of the museum just off of Main Street in North Judson. At the end of the days operations, the museums 95-ton G.E. diesel is shown below, pushing the car into HVRM's passing track.

The boxcar was originally part of the Indiana Transportation Museum's collection that was stored in a pair of sidings, north of Noblesville. That equipment was eventually moved to a non-rail location in Logansport and then recently, saw much of it being scrapped. Monon boxcar # 1220 however, had been privately purchased and with "SAVE" marked on both sides and both ends, finally made it safely to Hoosier Valley.

Plans are to eventually repaint and letter it for the Monon. First however, we will get some red primer out and paint over the graffiti. This is the 3rd piece of Monon equipment that is now at the museum, joining EMD SW1 diesel #DS-50 and transfer caboose 81551, both of which are long term museum restoration projects.

Thanks to Schlatter Boys trucking, for their excellent work in getting 1220 to its new home.


Les

Glad to see some positive news out of Indiana.

And the car looks mostly intact, including full height ladders. Any chance you'll get to put the running boards back on?

The museum is evaluating bringing the Monon boxcar over to be repainted and lettered. As you can see from the above photo, the car is currently covered in graffiti and I have now included a photo of the other side of the car, which obviously has the same problem. A typical 40' steel boxcar painted freight car red. But wait, there's more here than meets the eye!

The 150 cars of the 9000-9149 series, were built for the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville (Monon) in October of 1941, carrying the C.I.L. reporting marks and with the railroads old "Reliable Service" herald. But in late 1947 or early 1948, twenty five of the cars were brought in to the lines Lafayette, Indiana shops. They were given Evans DF loaders and assigned to service for the Appliance plant of General Electric in Louisville, Kentucky. At that time, the cars were given a new coat of gray paint with bright red lettering which included the railroads new "two teepees with arrowhead" logo. The 25 cars were also given road numbers 1201-1225. Our car is C.I.L. # 1220. It is this gray/red paint scheme, that HVRM wants to apply to the box car. We have been in conversation with the Monon Railroad Historical-Technical Society, and although we have received photos from them of a couple of cars from the series, none of these photos are in color. Some of the model railroad companies have produced these cars in the gray/red scheme, but we are not sure if the gray on those models, is the correct shade. We are hoping that someone, somewhere, might have taken a color photo of the cars when painted gray. The cars apparently did not last long in dedicated service and eventually ended up in general service and, beginning in September of 1952, were repainted back into red as they came into the Lafayette freight yard. C.I.L. 1220 was repainted in December of 1953 when, in addition to the freight car red paint, its reporting marks were also changed from C.I.L. to MON. The repainted cars kept the 1201-1225 numbers.

We are hoping that someone out there might have a color photo of one of these gray painted cars.

Thanks.

Les

There apparently is a boxcar on the ground in Butte MT still in Monon grey, it was from a later number series, but according to the original post it was used at the Louisville plant also. https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/ ... ?2,1960409

PMC -

Boy, you have a great memory! I now recall starting a thread here on RyPN on that boxcar in Butte, Montana identified as MONON #1299. Had some difficulty, but pulled up the old RYPN thread:

Monon boxcar a LOOOONG way from home!

Unfortunately, that car was an old rebuilt wood World War 1 boxcar as per the discussion on the TRAIN ORDER site and it doesn't help us with the car we have at HVRM. I'm not sure that it was even a gray car; may have been painted silver. The Monon Railroad Historical-Technical Society at the time of that old RyPN thread (2/28/2012) never could even identify it as actually being a Monon car.

Thanks anyway, for the heads up!

Les

There are apparently 59 photos of Monon boxcars in this collection: https://indianahistory.org/wp-content/u ... -1970s.pdf
But the odds are probably not good that one of the class you are looking for is in there.

PMC -

Right you are. The 1201-1225 series in gray paint, had an in-regular-service life of less than a decade. The chances of someone having taken a color photo of one of only 25 cars in service, was extremely small. Most folks didn't waste film on freight cars. To find a color photo out there is a real shot in the dark for sure!

I'm going to try to post a photo of one of the models of these cars here:

archive.atlasrr.com/Images/HOFreightCars/HO1937AARBoxCar/0113/21000037_TQ.jpg

Good chance that this effort will not be successful.

Les

Les, Wasn't the Monon's passenger color scheme originally red and gray? It stands to reason they'd use paint that was in stock, or at least match the colors in a less expensive line. Of course, the pix of passenger power I'm finding are not much help...

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/monon/mon83sba.jpg
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/monon/mon083Ag10.jpg
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/monon/mon084AjpC.jpg

It looks like the gray changed over time.

I came across quite a few models of your car series, too, here are just a few. The model companies must have access to color photos, right? Or at least one of them did, and the others just copied the first. Edit: Looks like "Micro Trains" made the 1223 model.

I won’t go into details on the colors in photos and on models, but, I suspect the red is the generic “Swift Red” used in the monograms on locos which should be an easy color to come up with. I don’t have anything on the gray and would love to have current color codes to add to the list.

PMC-

Thanks for the photos of the various models of the "gray/red" Monon cars. You the man!!!

Les

Eric -

We may have to look and see if we can come up with a "chip" of the gray paint.


Les

So, I did some digging on Micro Trains and found out they are located here in Oregon in Talent, the town near the California border that was badly damaged in a fire last summer. I emailed them, and they kindly wrote back:

"This car was released in 2002 prior to when we first started keeping digital records of our cars. Here is all the information we have on this car. We don’t have any colored pictures, but we had notes that were helpful in determining the color. When we did the car we color matched Floquil SP Lettering Gray #270-110130. This paint is discontinued now, but can be found on Ebay."

I think this means the lettering on locomotives. The SP 9010 group might know more about it.

Edit: I checked Jayrod's list and it looks like there are several versions of SP lettering gray, but only one called "Lettering Gray", dupont 54906. I'll bet there is a way to cross reference it with the Floquil number to choose the right one. No matter what, a very light gray.

Les - What brand of paint do you typically use? I can likely come up with a current code for the red. The gray, found nothin’ yet.

A common railroad light gray was DuPont 503 Suede gray. Anybody involved in EMD restorations will recognize this color. This railroad paint color list shows that the Monon did use Swift red.

http://railfonts.com/Reference/paint_cross.pdf