Southern Pacific lettering on steam locomotives

[SPer]

Why did the Southern Pacific removed LINES from their steam locomotive tenders . Does this mean all the SP subdiaries merged into a single railroad or for convience

[JimValle]

Southern Pacific was made up of an amalgamation of semi independent railroads, mainly the Central Pacific, Southern Pacific, New Orleans and Texas Pacific and other subsidiaries. The changeover from the lines disignation to simply Southern Pacific was made in the late '40's, probably because it no longer made sense to acknowledge the component lines and it was better for public recognition to just put a big SOUTHERN PACIFIC on the equipment and locomotives.

[West Coast S]

SP commenced to removing LINES lettering in 1946 with passenger power among the first to display the new standard of 15 inch letters, also adopted as standard in 1946 was the application of aluminum paint on the smoke box front for all steam power. 

Many of these former subdiaries continued to exist on paper for legal and tax purposes, although with the exception of the Cotton Belt no equiptment was so lettered past 1942. One example is the Pacific Electric who abandoned all operations in 1961 yet was not merged into the SP until 1964.

Dave

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

T&NO locomotives were long numbered in a separate series (1-999) and carried T&NO sub-lettering well into the diesel era.