BIllboard cars

Brian Norden Wrote:
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> As Earl said it was cheep. Probably the same
> reason so many barns were painted red.
>
> As a note, some of the early through freight car
> operations -- before the railroads began to
> interchange cars -- were done by private car
> companies that painted their cars with distinctive
> colors (blue, green, white, yellow, bright
> vermilion red ) and often used the color name in
> their business name. This was apparently done to
> make their cars stand out in trains and yards.
>
Exactly how do you define early? There were a lot of private owner cars painted to advertise the company that owned them right up into the 20th century. I forget the date it happened but this was ruled illegal at some point (1920's?).
hank