I was looking at Micro-Mark's current catalog and saw they were offering two different versions of a 40 foot AAR box car, one with UPS's old bowtie logo and one with their current logo. Are there prototypes for these or is this something Walthers just came up with to sell with their UPS Store kit. The fact they are offering a 40 foot box car with a modern logo indicates to me at least this one is not prototypical and I suspect neither are. Does UPS even ship by rail? I've seen lots of their double trailer trucks on the road and for long distances I'm guessing they are flying their shipments. I was looking at the history of UPS on Wikipedia and it indicated they resumed air service back in 1953 after first trying it in 1929 only to discontinue it during the Great Depression. It makes no mention of using rail service which would have put them in direct competition with REA at the time.
I may be wrong, but I think it's just a fantasy piece. I typed "UPS boxcar" and "UPS railcar" into Bing, and the only thing I could find any photos of in terms of UPS and railroads were some UPS trailers riding piggyback on flatcars. So they obviously ship some stuff over the rails, just not in their own boxcars it would seem.
I hadn't thought of piggyback but that does make sense. Probably faster than driving the trailers long distances over the road. I would bet UPS has guidelines for what they send by truck, what they piggyback, and what the send by air.
Watch some of the Virtual Railfan cameras on the transcontinental lines and you'll see plenty of UPS trailers on hot Z trains. I'd imagine that most of UPS trailers travel by train rather than highway except for the "last miles."
Ray
Complete fantasy piece. UPS never owned any railcars, beyond their current massive container fleet.
I have one Walthers UPS car in my fantasy collection. Certainly, there are models that suffer from judgment. One way to do this is to look at the reporting marks, and if not on the list Ian Cranstone created, it's likely a fantasy. However, there are some models that cannot be determined only by reporting marks. There are also examples like "OSHX 1" posted in a separate thread. What do you think of the following three cars?
ACFX 54100, Plexiglas Resins, Rohm & Haas-Pioneer
D&H 82151, Anthracite Blue Coal
TA&G C11230, Chiquita Brand Bananas Vegetables
The Plexiglass car is actually quite plausible; ACFX reporting marks belonged to ACF Leasing and cars bore all kinds of colourful logos of companies they were leased to. It can be hard to find specific photos of specific cars online sometimes though.
The D&H car I'm uncertain of. Couldn't find a prototype photo with a google search.
The TA&G banana car is almost certainly an utter fantasy.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
The UPS ones are fantasy paint schemes. Companies often do that because it helps give a car more market appeal. Collectors might want them and not all modelers are really all that concerned with 100 percent historical accuracy. Personally I always got a kick out of the fantasy paintschemes for various products because it reminds me of being a kid with a trainset. I know the rivet counters will cry but if they don't like what I put on my layout they can go kick rocks.
"Blue Coal" was the trademark of the Glen Alden Company whose mines were on the Lackawanna. I can't see any railroad - unless paid to do so - going to the expense of painting up cars for an off-line shipper. Second, it has to be in captive service only serving Glen Alden operations or it would run foul of the ICC directive that led to the disappearance of "Billboard" cars. Third, given how dirty cars in coal service get, how long the lettering would remain visible is questionable.
BTW, "Blue Coal" is so called because Glen Alden, as a marketing gimmick, sprayed the contents of loaded hoppers with a thin wash of cheap blue paint.
""Blue Coal" is the term for a once-popular and trademarked brand of anthracite, mined by the Glen Alden Coal Company in Pennsylvania, and sprayed with a blue dye at the mine before shipping to its northeastern U.S. markets to distinguish it from its competitors." - Wikipedia
And it is unlikely anthracite was shipped in 70 ton tripple hoppers, which were used for industrial and power plant customers, who generally used cheaper bituminous. Anthracite was normally used for home heating and shipped to retail coal dealers in 55 ton twin hoppers.
"'I have been told that in general bituminous coal was shipped in 70-ton cars, and anthracite coal in 50 ton cars. This is a very general rule of thumb. It had less to do with the difference in density as it had to do with shippers' preferences. The longer the car, the more economical. However, small retail firms were sometimes hard-pressed to order in even 50 ton batches. According to the Mechanical Advisory Committee's report of 1935, one railroad even had to establish a special tariff to permit 40 ton coal shipments in 50-ton cars"