小生にとってもタコナイト・オアカーの黄色いラインは、長年のなぞでもありました。Gngoatに問い合わせて、ようやく謎が解けたしだいです。ちょっと長い英文で恐縮ですが、記録のためにも以下転載します。
写真のように、北側には黄色いラインがありません（GN Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment: David H. Hickcox著P.83より）。
Re: Ore Cars
Hello, Bruce,
Your knowledge shared by your message solved my loｎg-frozen question and misunderstanding!
As you know, in the Scott's book (P.67), two color schemes are shown. The top photo shows yellow stripe on the extended portion of taconite cars, but the next or other photos show no yellow stripe. So, I had believed that there were two color schemes for taconite cars.
If I can get the Walthers model, I will paint yellow on only one (south) side of the extended portion.
Thank a lot!!!
Hiroshi Suzuki
From Tokyo, Japan
--- In gngoat@yahoogroups.com, Bruce Kuitunen <lowercherty@y...>
wrote:
The yellow ends started with the taconite cars in 1968. It was only used on taconite cars. Couples of things about this, the cars were not set up with rotary couplers. The yellow ends were just for indexing at the dumper in Allouez. The cars started out in the train with a red end, two yellow ends, two red ends, and so on until the caboose which followed a red end. If the cars were set out en route they were set out in pairs.
When the tac trains first started many of the cars were in numerical order, though this broke up over time.
There was also a left and right side to the paint scheme. On the south side of a west bound train the extension was painted yellow the entire length of the car. On the other side it was painted yellow only the same as the rest of the yellow end. This was to make sure the train was going the right way through the dumper. Walthers got this wrong, as well as the coupler combinations on the 12 car set, but then the Walthers cars with extensions are really closer to DMIR cars.
The dumper at Allouez has an automated mechanism to trap these cars two cars at a time. The ex GN taconite cars had friction bearing trucks that were converted to roller bearings. The door over the bearings was removed and you could see the roller bearing spinning inside.Taconite trains rated four F units, natural ore road trains 3. Both were about 200 cars long.
BN paint started on newly converted taconite cars after the merger. Most of these were ex NP cars that were newer and already had roller bearing trucks. Some Great Northern painted taconite and ore cars were left right up to scrapping.
Natural ore cars started mixing in natural ore service betweeh GN and NP right after the merger. I have a picture I took as a high school student in 1971 of two NP RS 11's on a way freight in Keewatin, MN. So far as I have ever been able to determine, if any ore cars were painted Sky Blue, they were soon repainted to mineral red. There were many taconite cars converted for wreck replacement after Sky Blue came but they still came out in the standard taconite scheme.
There were however some GN ore cars painted in Vermillion Red in standard service and in Jade Green with experimental door seals. Both were in natural ore service. There was one BN taconite car painted gold to celebrate 1 billion tons of ore shipped or some such. This had Cascade Green lettering.
So far as I know, there were no BN painted cars in Cascade Green. The taconite cars were mineral red and yellow. There was one natural ore car painted for BN but it was black or dark brown. The rest of the GN and NP cars that atayed in natural ore service stayed in their original paint until they were removed from ore service.
Hope this adds to the general knowledge.
Bruce K
Mt. Iron, MN
