When did "Patching" become a thing?

[drgw0579]

When you watch a train go by, you will see cars and sometimes locomotives that have "patched" roadnames or reporting marks.  When did this start?

I can remember early ConRail, it seems the first thing somebody did was go out with a "CR" stencil and start attacking all the locomotives.  Eventually they got completely repainted, but it probably took 5-8 years.  A little bit later a lot of the Rock Island equipment got recycled and patched.  I remember seeing a photo of a contractor using a paint roller to paint out "The Rock" on a covered hopper.

Did anyone do that before the mid-70's?

Bill Kepner

[learmoia]

Penn Central and Erie Lackawanna were doing it too...

Penn Central would have been hard to notice (Black vs Almost Black vs Dammit it's not black it's green...) Apart from New Haven and other oddball things (Rio Grande F Units).

EL was a little more tasteful about it.. putting an EL inside the logo of an Erie or Lackawanna locomotive.

And NYC was patching the older "New York Central" schemes with the cigar band under the cab without full repaints. Especially with GE's...

Rock Island was patching stuff in the 1960s too.. (UP F units, and some 2nd hand jeeps.. )

[C855B]

...(Black vs Almost Black vs Dammit it's not black it's green...)...

You made me spit my coffee all over my keyboard. Good thing I have a spare.

[btrain]

I’d say in the beginnings of the diesel era. Found this one of a CE&I geep patched out for the L&N. https://flic.kr/p/ppD237

Theres also photos floating around somewhere of L&N patched units that belonged to the Leigh & New England. I also recall that the NYC patching Ontario & Western switchers after it had gone bankrupt. 

[Missaberoad]

L&N Also had former Rutland units acquired after their liquidation. Early 1960s

I have a picture somewhere of a Canadian Northern boxcar obviously patched to be Canadian National, that would be 1920s.
There's examples of patched lettering on billboard reefers in the early 1930s.

Algoma Central acquired a fleet of hoppers from eastern coal roads in the early 1950s that were repainted so quickly you could argue it was a patch job. The hot sinter ore burned off most of the evidence of their former ownership pretty quickly tho.

Its obviously has become more common since the 1970s with the mergers/bankruptcies and prevalence of leased cars that change "ownership" every 5 to 15 years.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Some of my favorite pre-Conrail patches: https://akronrrclub.wordpress.com/2016/04/21/railroading-as-it-once-was-when-erie-lackawanna-and-delaware-hudson-swapped-power/

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[learmoia]

L&N patched Ex N&STL loco..



There are probably examples of N&W ex Wabash and ex NKP locos..

And then is it a patch or a quick repaint that wore off after a couple of months/years.


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And sometimes a PC patch was just putting a number on it..
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[nkalanaga]

BN did it, but they were very neat about it.  Remove the old number, not just paint over it, and apply new BN numbers and initials, also very neatly. 

[Westcoast_Trains]

A lot of the BNSF locomotives that retained the cascade green, I notice the numbers were either painted over with green patches or they were removed. To my knowledge this was going on in the 1970's merger days as well, ex SPS/GN/NP locos had the numbers removed and were replaced with new numbers with a small BN reporting mark underneath.

[nkalanaga]

That's exactly how the BN did it - very neatly.  Makes renumbering models simple.

Part of it was that the BN and BNSF mergers were "friendly".  There was no corporate desire to erase the former partners, so they took their time repainting.

[R L Smith]

Referencing the Erie / DL&W merger in October 1960, the railroad(s) had several decal / vinyl labels with "Erie-Lackawanna" spelled out, ready to apply to the passenger locomotives on Day 1. Locomotive renumbering was not needed wholesale, only on the few number series that were duplicated. This was accomplished with neatly-painted road numbers rather than a "patch out" as we see them today.

[nkalanaga]

The BN renumbered almost everything, except a very few switchers.  Not only did they have quite a few duplicates, but they wanted all of a given model in the same number group.  But they also had a couple years to figure out exactly what the renumbering would look like, as the courts delayed the merger from 1968 to 1970.  That's part of the reason merger day went so smoothly - they'd been working on it steadily for months, and had been making plans since the 1920s.