Athearn's latest WM Airslides--accurate?

[chessie system fan]

Years ago, I upgraded an old Atlas WM airslide with a scale roof and painted it black, basing it on the image in the WM Color Guide, but as time's gone by I've wondered if the roof pictured in the Guide was just incredibly filthy.  I'm now wishing I had kept it gray.

Now Athearn's released their version of a WM airslide, and it has a black roof and underframe and a yellow stripe right under the eaves.

http://www.modeltrainstuff.com/Athearn-N-Airslide-Hopper-WM-p/ath-23113.htm

I had always assumed the yellowish eaves in the Guide's image was just rust and weathering, but now I'm really confused.  Does anyone have any more information on the roof and eaves?  WM only had three of these things (I think) so images are difficult to come by.

edit:  added icon, tom mann

[jmlaboda]

Athearn is not the only one to do that paint scheme... Atlas O did the same so I would imagine that there is a prototype.  Whether it was simply one car or a large portion of the fleet is uncertain but I believe that it is prototypical.  Here's the link to the shot of the O-scale model...

http://www.atlaso.com/images/40airslide/0707/7374-2_TQ.jpg

[Ngineer]

Not the same, but the WM hopper pictured here has a similar yellow band on the car end:

http://rr-fallenflags.org/wm/wm5757abr.jpg

And:

http://www.bluford-shops.com/bluford_93_022.htm

Quote:

"When Western Maryland received these hoppers from Bethlehem Steel in 1958, they had a bright yellow top chord and ends (also released by Bluford Shops in 2011) denoting the cars were equipped with roller bearing trucks. As the years passed and roller bearing trucks became more prevelent, WM decided that all of the extra yellow trim was superfluous and stopped applying it as cars were repainted during normal servicing."

http://www.bluford-shops.com/bluford_93_017.htm

And another one:

http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=242131

Matt Adams states: "They even went so far as to put the yellow end on this car, which was a designation on the WM that a car was equipped with Roller Bearings when RB's first started showing up."

Javier

[chessie system fan]

OK then, if Atlas did it too then that says something.  Odd that they didn't do it on their N scale models though.

I'd still love to see a prototype image though to confirm it.