N scale Santa Fe decals.. what gives

[Puddington]

I've had a long standing project on the bench, a trio of BX66 50's boxcars for ATSF. These were a common sight in BC in the early 70's, bringing Temple Inland linerboard from Beaumont TX up north. The original scheme as built in 1954 is easy to decal; the small "Santa Fe" black and white square with the "named train" logo on the right hand side. The re-paint, as of 1970 or so utilized the large Santa Fe rondel on the left with the words "Santa Fe" in their proprietary font on the right hand side.... only I can't find N scale "Santa Fe" decals in white.... The rondel is readily available from Microscale but the sheets all have DF, Shock Control or named train decals with them, not "Santa Fe"....

Ok; there were thousands of cars with the stylized "Santa Fe" on them..... what am I missing ? Someone has to make this common logo... HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I knew I should have stuck to Canadian Pacific...................

[randgust]

These, right?  http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3638459

Is this the set you're looking for ?  It's been around for years - basically (1)60-30:

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=60-30&Category_Code=ATSF&Product_Count=120

1972 was the changeover to the "Santa Fe" sides when 'ship and travel' became obsolete due to Amtrak.   Massive car repaints.  Remember that cars also had roofwalks removed, ladders shortened, and brakestands lowered (generally) when they got repainted under that program.  And for the most part, the paint was fresh but they hardly ever did the roofs, or they did them so poorly the paint came right back off the galvanized material.    There were a LOT of vintage "route of the _____" 40' boxcars that got the treatment as well, and didn't last much more than 10 years in service or less.   While the company standard became the "Santa Fe", it always seemed to me that they were in one awful hurry to eliminate any and all references to the pre-Amtrak passenger era, whether it was on boxcars, red and silver paint on diesels, or anything else - and boxcars with passenger train references seemed to get undue attention first.

MT has done several cars in the scheme, the 'glaring error' is that many of the cars still have roofwalks on them, etc.  Also remember that ACI labels were still the norm, and lube plates were just starting up.  Atlas has the same problem on their 50' single door, modernized paint with no changes on the car:  http://www.buynscale.com/blwphotos/AT-50SD-ATSF.jpg , but if you had to do a fleet of them thats probably a 'goodenuf'.

If you're modelling that era it's completely appropriate to have two identical cars in the same train; one in the original scheme with roofwalks and pro-passenger era, weathered and faded, a second post-rebuild in fresh paint and lettering.  Makes it fun.

[Puddington]

Hi, it's Mike, from Mike's Stupid Supply... Mike says thank you for showing him what he spent an hour searching for; high blood pressure and frustration growing with each minute of said search...

Thank you kind sir.................

[randgust]

You're welcome, and I'm sorta glad that the only two CP boxcars I owned were traded a while back.... I don't even want to think how inaccurate those Bachmann (Parkway) script CP newsprint service 50' insulated boxcars probably were that I got back in 1973!  http://www.spookshow.net/freight/bach50plug.html
At least I'd hacked off those awful roofwalks....

[OldEastRR]

1972 was the changeover to the "Santa Fe" sides when 'ship and travel' became obsolete due to Amtrak.

Santa Fe still wanted people to "ship" if they couldn't travel. I remember seeing brown SF 40 footers in Chicago around that time with the old slogans partly painted out. The "and Travel" words were gone leaving
"Ship (blank)" with "Santa Fe" on the line below. An easy car to make by cutting up the Walthers decal.  Also using a slightly different BCR to patch out the words. Also a good era indicator on a layout.

[Ron McF]

Between the 1954 scheme mentioned by Puddington, and the 1972 scheme (with large cross and circle herald, and billboard "Santa Fe") mentioned by randgust, there was this scheme from 1958 or 1959 which had the large cross and circle at one end and a "SHIP AND TRAVEL ..." logo on the other:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2370518

You can see the original scheme with the earlier "Ship and Travel..." logo peeking through the faded paint.

When this scheme was introduced the cars still kept their roof walks, but they were later removed. This photo shows two cars in the scheme, one with a roof walk and the other without. Interestingly, the herald and logos seem to be different sizes on the two cars.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1076281

Regards,
Ron
(23)

[randgust]

Make sure you put up some pictures when you get 'em done.

I used to harass my Conrail friends because in the repaint/patch era I used to say that "CR" stood for Crash Repaint and Cursory Repairs.   ATSF never got quite that bad, but the "billboard" repaints were close.   To me the signature image on the ATSF for boxcars of that era is the freshly-painted sides with those ragged-looking roofs, like on that B&W shot I posted up front.   Both PC and CR had huge fleets of 40' patch jobs.

I'm intrigued by that memory of 40' cars with "and travel" patched out.   "Ship & Travel SANTA FE all the way' was not only on the boxcars, but was the predominant scheme on the mechanical reefer fleet up until the "Santa Fe" billboard.  I've never seen any pictures of 'good' cars patched like that, but I'm guessing what you would have seen would have been cars near-expired or already expired on age for interchange restriction.    If you can find any photos of that (or anybody else) I'd love to see some, as I'd like to model a car like that (with a seemingly fresh patch over "travel").

The one-car monstrosity patch job that MT has memorialized doesn't count.   Sorry, even I don't have the heart to put that on my layout:
http://home.comcast.net/~mark.lawler/trains/rollingstock/images/microtrains_27270_box_car_Santa_Fe_ATSF_56227.jpg

[randgust]

More truth to the 'never say never' department.

If you look at the link on the previous post, you'll see that interesting 34789 car with the lowered ladders, no roofwalk and intact 'ship and travel' has a shop date of 1979 on it!  And no repaint with that wonderful see-thru effect!   No lube plates either, but a very fresh wheel stencil.

Here's the opposite end of the scale - SAME BX60 CLASS BOXCAR - with no roofwalk, high ladders, a lube plate, a May 1972 shop date and a billboard paint scheme, and an interesting 'double patch' wheel stencil.   I liked this because it illustrates my point about roofs and paint, as in, they weren't deliberately painted silver (as you'll see on some models) but were the effect that the paint seemingly refused to stick to the galvanized roofing panels in any meaningful way.   Which makes for interesting modeling.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2370516

Same cars, same class, same railroad, same era, completely different results.