Amtrak passenger car paint in 1974

[nkalanaga]

With Kato announcing an SDP40F, the question has arisen as to what to pull with it.  The quick answer is almost any streamlined passenger car one has, but mine is more specific.  I have pictures from Amtrak in 1971/72, and from 1976-78.  The cars in the early pictures are almost all in pre-Amtrak paint, and the latter all repainted, except for some leased SP baggage cars.  But what would the train have looked like in 1973/74, when these units were new?

When did Amtrak repaint enough of their cars that a non-Amtrak car became the oddity, instead of the rule?

For me, specifically, a much harder question:  What did the Empire builder look like in June 1974? 

[jagged ben]

You've heard of Google images right?

There's several decent references here.
http://www.umcycling.com/amtrakc.htm

[wcfn100]

June 1974. 









From here:

http://picssr.com/search/empire+builder+1974


Jason

[johnb]

[jagged ben]

Cool stuff, I may get sucked into modeling 1970s San Francisco Zephyr and Coast Starlight.   Crap, I'm an addict for never ending expansion of my modeling interests.   

[nkalanaga]

Wfcn100 and JohnB:  Thank you!  Just what I was looking for.  It looks like mostly Amtrak, with a few surviving railroad-scheme cars. 

Jagged Ben:  Yes, I've heard of, and used, Google Images.  It usually returns thousands of irrelevant images, with a a few good ones mixed in.  In this case, the main question was generic enough that I thought some of the passenger car fans here could probably answer it
off the tops of their heads, saving me and others a lot of search time.

That link you provided does have some interesting pictures, including the one in the top row of the Appekuny Mountain.  Those observation cars went through Pasco in the early days of Amtrak, one at a time, on one-way trips to retirement.  They'd been taken off the GN's major trains years earlier, and were used as lounge cars on secondary lines.  Amtrak had no use for them, so they were all sold or scrapped.

From its pictures, it seems that the Empire Builder was almost entirely Amtrak by the summer of 1974, with the exceptions being due to car shortages related to the new North Coast Hiawatha.  Apparently I can thank Expo 74 for the survival of variety in the Northwest trains.

Business in the Northwest was so good that summer that the Empire Builder sometimes ran two sections through Pasco between Spokane and Seattle, the only time I can remember ever seeing a train with green class lights.  Even with the new SDP40Fs there was plenty of work for the old F units.  Unfortunately, I was working that summer, so very seldom had a chance to take pictures.

Besides the EB and NCH, there was also a short-lived Seattle-Spokane train, through Wenatchee, solely for Expo.  Northwest passenger trains were busy that summer!

[jmlaboda - RIP]

As much of a push as there was to get cars repainted for Amtrak cars that had recently been repainted, such as the BSB cars in the photos above, were late to the game as far as repainting went since their paint was fairly new.

Another thing that occurred, but was far less common, was undecorated cars which had some of the paint removed but not yet decorated with the blunt-arrow scheme...



[img]http://rrpicturearchives.net/pictures%5C84923%5Cimg909aw.jpg[img]  Photo by J. Fischer.

[nkalanaga]

I remember seeing quite a few like that, usually ex-CB&Q, where all Amtrak did was to buff the roadname off the letterboard.  Often there was enough difference in the texture of the buffed area that one could identify the original owner, if the angle and light was just right.