I can't seem to find any prototype photos of the new coil cars atlas released. Is it just that I am not looking hard enough or are they fantasy schemes?
http://www.atlasrr.com/HOFreight/ho42coilcar3.htm <-- said cars in question.
Gidday, does this help?
http://www.progressiverailroading.com/railproducts/product/42Foot-Steel-Coil-Cars--177
Cheers, the Bear.
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
" ‡Alternate History paint scheme "
It looks like they did have real paint schemes in a previous run.
Well, Atlas's use of ATL liveries aside, did North American steel companies ever own their own coil cars painted in their own liveries (in signficant number - there may well have been one or two offs in the past)? Steel companies did own in-plant railroads (e.g. Philadelphia, Bethlehem and New England Railroad for Bethlehem Steel), so I'd figure any freight cars would be painted in those Railroad's liveries.
Aside from the part where the website says they're not real, I know from my 26 years experience of living six miles from ARMCO's Butler plant (and driving up and down what we called Armco Hill, having some money in the Armco Credit Union, calling it Armco way after it became AK Steel, etc.) that there were no ARMCO painted coil cars in interchange service and nothing painted like their locomotives. That Atlas car is even lettered for Butler. There were some unique cars roaming that property though. Like what I called the hollow gondolas and the flat cars with the huge cube covers.
While the 42'6" NSC coil cars are real, those steel company paint schemes on them are fantasy. They do look pretty cool though. I kinda wondered if US Steel, AK Steel, et. al actually did have cars like that at first but after diggin' through rrpicturearchivess.net I came to the conculsion those were fantasy paint schemes. It kind of reminds me of how back in the day you used to see all kinds of model freight cars lettered for all kinds of products (i.e. a boxcar painted up for Champion sparkplugs, tanker cars painted with coca cola paint schemes.). It will drive the rivet counters crazy but if you like `em I see no harm in them. I'd get them but I'm not sure if 42'6" NSC coil cars fit my era which is the 1990s. Or then again maybe I can bump my timeframe up a few years once in a while.
dirtyd79It kind of reminds me of how back in the day you used to see all kinds of model freight cars lettered for all kinds of products (i.e. a boxcar painted up for Champion sparkplugs, tanker cars painted with coca cola paint schemes.). It will drive the rivet counters crazy but if you like `em I see no harm in them.
Maybe they got the idea from freight trucks- many trailers are used as large billboards nowdays- so, why not box cars?
Cedarwoodron
I have found photos of the SeverCorr cars on flicker.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8054595@N02/7154570470
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50090140@N08/8199457875
I was looking because I just purchased an Atlas model online.
Regards Jon.
ndbprrWell the ICC banned billboard advertizing on cars at some point. Can't remember when or why but it is illegal.
Advertising 3rd party products on your cars.
Think of it this way:
If you own or lease the car, you can have your own logos and slogans all over it.
I've seen some cases where cars appear to be in dedicated service and get a customer's logo on it, and that appears to be fine somehow.
But for a railroad-owned general service car, you can't put advertising and logos for other companies all over it; imagine for example that the railroad services a Coke plant and provides a boxcar for loading with competitor Pepsi's logos all over it. So they load that car and their customer gets a car loaded with their product but advertising for at best something completely unrelated, at worst, a direct competitor.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
Foud this on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Billboard-Refrigerator-Richard-Kaminski-Hendrickson/dp/1930013221
"The practice of painting advertisements on the freight cars of shippers and car owners dates well back into the 19th century. But in the 1920s, leasing companies realized they could contract with shippers to pass back usage payments beyond some agreed minimum. This led to an explosion of car leasing and, as this book amply demonstrates, a corresponding explosion of billboard decoration of refrigerator cars. Railroad objections, especially to the usage payment rebates, led to hearings before the Interstate Commerce Commission, which, taking effect in 1937, banned most of the leasing practices which had generated the car leasing bonanza. After World War II, a restrained billboard style made a modest comeback. Car-side advertising was only a detail of that ICC decision."
and this in a discussion oF a 1939/40 case involving an oil company http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/308/422
" ...July 2, 1934, when the Interstate Commerce Commission rendered its decision in Use of Privately Owned Refrigerator Cars, 201 I.C.C. 323, in which it considered the payment of mileage allowances to shippers either directly or through car owners, which payments exceeded the total of the agreed rental for the use of the cars and any additional actual expenses of the shipper in connection with the cars. In that case the Commission held that such payments operated to give the lessee transportation of his products at lower rates than those paid by other shippers who use cars furnished by the carriers and thus amounted to a rebate from the published transportation rates..."
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I think it means: Letting a customer use the car as a billboard amounted to a partial rebate of the costs thus giving them a lower rate , therefore an unfair advantage over their competors.
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.