1970s Canadian National boxcar roadnames

[nkalanaga]

I recently acquired 5 Intermountain 40 ft CN "wet noodle" boxcars.  Fixing them up, I (finally) noticed that they say "CANADIAN" on both sides, instead of having the French version on one side.  As most picture sites only show one side of a car, this MAY be right, but seems unusual.  These cars are in the 5375xx - 5383xx series.

Were any of these painted with the same name on both sides, or were the IM designers lazy?  I'd try to fix them, but finding an "E" that would match the printed names seems to be a lot of work.

Looking through my few CN boxcars, it seems that the only models I have that DO have the French lettering are one MT car, and the cars I lettered with CDS dry transfers.

[cv_acr]

Probably lazy. IMRC has botched up paint schemes and is famous for just slapping stand-in schemes from different car models. (e.g. CP Newsprint service "shield" boxcars were exclusively 8' door cars, and any of the red & white TCAX covered hoppers were Thrall 4750s, not Pullman-Standard 4750s, etc.)

The 1960s design of the new CN "noodle" scheme was specifically to have a bilingual logo and featured English and French (Canadien National) versions of the road name on each side. It's possible exceptions occured, especially on older 40' cars that were repainted, but probably rare.

It'd be pretty easy for an artwork designer working off a single photo, and ignorant of this little feature of CN's paint scheme, to do both sides the same way.

[nkalanaga]

Than you!  Since most of the other manufacturers seem to do the same thing, that's what I suspected.  In this case, they're plain 40 ft boxcars (Improved 1937 AAR), and not too far from the prototypes, so the prototypes would be repaints.

I'd replace the "A" with an "E" if I had decals or dry transfers that matched well, but I don't, so it will have to stay.

They can go with my MT "Main Central" PS-1 and Athearn MILW boxcar with the missing "u" in "Reso rceful".  On that one, they didn't just misspell it, they actually left a space where the "u" should be...