That will be quite appropriate. Tank cars on long term lease might get special corporate graphics and/or reporting marks, but surges in business will see the same shipper arranging for short term lease of additional cars. They will come from the general pool of similar cars and be very generic in lettering. UTLX has a vast fleet of different types of tank cars.
Boxcars. flat cars hoppers and the like are often somewhat free roving, rather like the Railbox slogan, "Next Load, Any Road". Railroad owned cars are usually pointed back towards the home road if a suitable load is available. Tank cars on the other hand are mostly found in assigned service so that there is no contamination of the liquid. Draining those last gallons of product and removing all traces requires a lot of work so they usually return empty to the origin to take on another load of the exact same product.
John
Joe Staten Island West
BTW the X on the end indicates the car isn't owned by a railroad but a private company - many of those cars are leased from a car leasing company to the company that's operating them. Sometimes the car will have the reporting marks of the owning company but have a logo/herald etc. for the company leasing it, but often the company leasing the car will have their own reporting marks. So...a tank car owned by Dow Chemical might have the reporting marks DOWX, but a car owned by UTLX and leased to Dow might also have DOWX reporting marks.
After much thought I decided that I could service my need for tanker cars with UTLX leased cars carrying petroluem products to my oil dealership.
And remember that a lot of private companies may operate railcars but lease them from one of the big railcar leasing/management companies so they may have a number of cars with their logo but not actually have their own reporting marks.
You'd really have a hard time doing that sort of search as the cars will all be listed under the leasing company.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
ORER's after about 1974 have an index towards the front that lists the names of owners and the page they may be found on. From that, you can get the reporting marks.
ORER's previous to that had an index that listed the owners in alphabetical order and supplied the reporting marks directly.
Ed
The Official Railway Equipment Register has its index by company/ owner names and shows reporting marks for each owner. The index also has reporting marks next to the owner, but reporting marks are not capitalized so it takes a little looking over a dozen or so pages.
My personal initials are KLA and I discovered in the April 1954 ORER that there was a H.Earl Clack Co in Montana with 8 tank cars, reporting marks KLAX, so I guess I could have prototypically lettered cars with my initials.
You would need to purchase an ORER for the period you want, they are published quarterly listing all the owners of equipment by railroad, then the private owners by the name of the owner like General Electric, Andersons or Trailer Train.
Rick J
Rule 1: This is my railroad.
Rule 2: I make the rules.
Rule 3: Illuminating discussion of prototype history, equipment and operating practices is always welcome, but in the event of visitor-perceived anacronisms, detail descrepancies or operating errors, consult RULE 1!
You can go from reporting marks to company (Wikopedia or Google), but company to reporting marks is harder.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
I know there is a database to connect reporting marks with a cars owner. What I am wondering is there a database that I can use to see if a company owns any equiptment and what the reporting mark would be for that equiptment?