Uncle Pete Truck colour

[Puddington]

I have been reading some debates on the web about when the trucks of UP passenger equipment might have been painted grey or silver - does anyone have an opinion or fact on the timeline for this ? I've seen n scale equipment with both !

Thanks in advance.

[jnevis]

Flipping through Brian Solomon's "Union Pacific Railroad" wasn't much help.  Most of the pictures of passenger equipment the trucks are silver but some appear grey, or REALLY dirty silver.  Page 72 has a close up of a Porter standing between a pair of cars that have silver trucks in 1971, but on page 82/82 is a more distant shot of the COLA in 1946 dark trucks that appear to dark to have every been silver underneath.  Another shot of the COLA in the 50's on page 85 appears to be grey as well.

Barring more definative information, I'd say that they were grey up through the mid/late 60s, then silver through today's Heritage/Steam Specials

[ljudice]

Definitely silver today.

[Nato]

      It was in the mid 1950's that the change was made,I will have to dig out my huge source book "Union Pacific Streamliners" By William Kratville to get the exact date. I know that the first dome cars delivered in 1955 came with gray trucks, and the end caps on the roller bearings were painted silver which denoted roller bearing equiped cars. This was also done on Livestock Dispatch stock cars that had roller bearings,black trucks with silver caps originally ,later all silver.FEF 4-8-4 locos and Challengers and Big Boys also had silver bearing ends.The stated reason to switching to silver was flaws IE: cracks in truck frames could be more easly dected with a bright color.I would say that by 1956 silver truck repaint was well underway. I know there was a brief period was it late 1980's or early 90's when locomotive trucks went back to gray.Nate Goodman (Nato).

[FloridaBoy]

While we are on the subject of silver trucks, I have an early version LifeLike E8A in NYC Lightning Stripe with silver trucks factory applied. Every NYC diesel and even E units purchased afterwards from LifeLike were unpainted molded black.

I have seen one photo of a NYC Lightning Stripe I unit with silver trucks but not sure if it were done recently for excursion decoration or if NYC painted their passenger trucks silver back then.  I have been told by a couple of fellow model railroaders that the silver trucks are accurate, but I would like to hear from the experts on this forum for which I have unlimited respect.

Thanks in advance

Ken "FloirdaBoy" Willaman

[Bob Horn]

I read someplace that UP painted their trucks silver for ease of maintance. Bob.

[FloridaBoy]

Bob

I heard that too.  I also heard that Santa Fe repainted their trucks after every steam cleaning "very informally" for the same reason.

Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman