Jim,
I think most were actually D&SL and that wasn't many. So it's technically debateable whether they were Rio Grande before that. IIRC, the D&SL had them in black, so it's kind of a no miss proposition IIRC. Eager's Color Guide shows three, 2 from 1936 and 1 from 47.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
When I consulted the caboose chapter in my Rio Grande Diesels Vol 3, it doesn't look like there were very many standard gauge cabooses before the 014xx series steel cabooses were built, but since cabooses were a mainstay at the time, I wonder what the caboose fleet looked like prior to 1940. The series I mentioned above were only 10 cabooses; maybe there are undocumented cabooses that helped fill out the roster in those days?
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
yeah, I mangled that paragraph together. Didn't mean to imply any of the steel cabooses were brown. All steel black in that era AFAIK but were a distinct minority untill the 01400 series grew apperiably.
From memory, the color scheme for cabooses prior to the 1950's was just black on the steel rivited 3-window offset cupola cabooses.
From most of the photo's and of course consult the recommended references, the older wood side cabooses were brown.
So for the 1930's and 1940's it's a pretty simple proposition for the cabooses. It wasn't until later that D&RGW began to get frisky and mix up the paint jobs, first with the grande gold/silver cabooses with four black stripes (1950's) and then in the 1960's switched to a single black stripe, and in the early 1970's introduced the solid orange paint scheme with the rhomboid Rio Grande logo.
Here's a useful guide, including discussion of paint schemes:
http://utahrails.net/drgw/rg-cabooses-index.php
The discussion of paint schemes is for the steel caboooses. However, it was pretty simple and can be put together with the right pic, a good set of decals and whatever you feel is the closest boxcar/truscan/mineral red you feel is close. Note that paint was sometimes white, sometimes aluminum on things like end railings, etc, a little hard to make out which in old B&W pics, but I'm going from the paint on the broadly similar narrowgauge cabooses. YMMV on that.
They're not all Rio Grande, but lots of pics here:
http://cdm16079.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/searchterm/photograph!caboose/field/formatb!all/mode/all!all/conn/and!and/order/title/ad/asc
That's linked from Denver Public Libraries apparently recent addition of a Railroad pic page linking their collections RR pics directly toegther, a great resource:
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/railroad/
The D&RGW began building their 01400 series steel rivited cabooses in 1940 and kept building to that basic design into 1959, the last of the appox 20 cabooses in the 01400-01489 were all welded construction (reference - Rio Grande Diesels Vol 3 by Joseph Strapac). If you are limiting to the 1940's then the numers were 01400-01459.
Rio Grande had steel frame drover cabooses built in 1937 (10) in the 01350-01359 series with wood sides.
I'm assumoing you mean standard gauge. They used an end-cupola wooden car that was also used on WP, painted mineral brown with white lettering. They also had steel end-cupola cars painted black with white lettering. The wood cars had either no herald and road name spelled out on the letterboard in white, or herald or speed letteringand road name spelled out.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=225002
The steel cars had the speed lettering in white.
wondering about what style caboose/ Waycar the DRGW used in the1930s/40s
what color and lettering style was used.