Re: Work trains and stuff...

To add to the photo roster of D&RGW outfit cars, I will present this shot of 04953 from November 26.



For what it is worth, I have spent the last 16 years trying to find out anything I could about 04953's use as an outfit car and have come up pretty much empty handed. If there were records of outfit car assignments (beyond the previously mentioned wreck and rotary train consists), they don't seem to have survived. The D&RGW car records survive at the CRRM and will show when a car was converted into an outfit car. About the only other sources to be found are photos and the surviving cars themselves.

In the case of 04953, it was converted into an outfit car in September of 1922. Quoting from Steve Swanson and Mike Horner's book "No records indicate the type of work service until the car was painted gray and stenciled "Office" ". I have found a couple of photos of 04953 from 1928 which give some clue how it was lettered when it was painted red. As the photos are meant to be portraits of people standing by the car (the wife of the track foreman who was living in the car at the time) they don't show the whole car nor all of the lettering.

04953's later years on the D&RGW are fairly well documented as it and sister 04951 were set out at Monarch around 1950, de-trucked and used as shacks for the car inspectors who looked over the loaded gondolas before the trains started their descent to Poncha Junction and Salida. The cars remained in place into the late 1970's, so quite a few photos exist that show pretty much all of the lettering that was on the cars the last time they were painted by the Rio Grande.

In the case of 04953, it would appear that is was painted gray in January, 1945 at Alamosa. The data on the end of the car indicates that it was weighed in Alamosa in January of 1945 (or at least it was supposed to be weighed, while the date information was stenciled on the car, "ALA 1-45", the weight itself was left blank except for a couple of zeros.) This would indicate that the car was painted in Alamosa in January of 1945. The car itself offered some help as a "SALIDA 3-28-47 D&RGW" stencil still exists on the brake cylinder. Taken together, it can be discerned that 04953 was painted Gray and stenciled "OFFICE" at Alamosa in January of 1945. Two years later, its brake cylinder was cleaned and oiled in Salida (indicating that it was most likely assigned to Salida at the time).

Luckily enough photos of 04953 exist (all of them taken while it was on the ground at Monarch) to allow for an accurate re-creation of the car's 1945 (and last Rio Grande) paint and lettering, as seen on the car today.

04953 is really an exception amongst the surviving outfit car bodies still floating around. Most of the still existing cars seem not to have been photographed until most, of not all, of the original paint and lettering were long gone and in service photos of the cars are few and far between. They are neat and interesting cars and it seems as though there may still be a few out there looking for a good home.

Jason Midyette