The owner of the C&O wide-vision caboose formerly at Thronateeska Heritage Center wants to paint the car in one of the Chessie safety schemes. He is leaning toward one applied to C&O 3163, which was predominantly silver with yellow sides and white letter boards where the safety slogan was applied. The attached photo is from George Ellwood's Fallen Flags site, and is credited to Dennis Schmidt, taken in Saginaw, MI on 12-24-76.

The new owner and I have tried contacting the C&O historical society folks to get assistance on proper colors, but without response. The owner would like to make the finished product as authentic as possible, and to that end, would like to see if there is any other resource for the graphics necessary, lettering guides and paint colors to do this. We have a fine sign shop I have used to make the graphics we have used at Thronateeska for the more recent restorations, but lettering diagrams would be a big help. I'd prefer to not have to resort to finding HO decals and scaling them up. :>)



Any help would be appreciated.

You need to talk to this gentleman; I'm surprised you have not bumped into him already. He is THE authority on CSX cabooses, and responsible for dozens of repaints and relocations.

Dwight Jones
536 Clairbrook Avenue
Columbus, Ohio 43228-2539
Or you can email Dwight at csxcabooses@msn.com

He even gave the heads up call that resulted in my acquisition of the final Ann Arbor caboose, which is now restored and in service at the Steam Railroad Institute in Owosso, MI.

Steve Zuiderveen

Link to a Dwight Jones caboose story, and how to get his book:
http://www.toyandtrain.com/caboose.htm

Thanks, Steve. I have passed the contact information you provided to the new owner of C&O 3316. Thanks!

Stephen S. Syfrett wrote, "The owner of the C&O 3316/903316 wide-vision caboose would like to make the finished product as authentic as possible."



Hi,

Dwight Jones is certainly a good contact for the paint and lettering information for the caboose.

However, I'm not sure authentic is the correct word in this case. Only 3 C&O cabooses were painted into Chessie safety schemes and C&O 903316 was not one of them.

Cheers, Roger

Roger, in this case "authentic" applied to the scheme, not in terms of an authentic restoration of the 3316. The car had been gutted before I got involved with it at the museum, and although it has the remnants of a badly weathered blue body with "C and O for Progress" stenciling scheme, the new owner has decided to go with this specific Chessie safety scheme. This is a better option, given the heritage of the car, than painting it into a fake SAL scheme, which was an early consideration.

BTW, the car is now located far off live rail about 5 miles south of Camilla, GA on a small farm. I documented the move on December 9, 2006. The move took place by lowboy trailer, with 2 cranes used to lift and then position on a short piece of track at the new location. I'll be following the restoration progress as time and ability permit (the car is about a 45 minute drive from my location).