Re: Freight car colors.

The "boxcar red" used on the stock cars originally was Prince's Mineral Red, a specific brand that was actually very common among all railroads at the time. However, underframes and ironwork were painted black; I have heard that this was because it was thought that black paint protected metal from rust better than any other color, but there were several paint manufacturers that offered "iron preservative" paints, advertised towards the railroad industry, that were bitumen based and thus only came in black, so in my personal (unsubstantiated) opinion the black paint used on underframes was probably this sort of material. The 1918 Standard Paint Company catalog lists a "P&B brand" bituminous-based "anti-acid" paint, only available in black, quote "unequaled for protecting the floors, sills and other parts of stock, dairy and refrigerator cars, subjected to the action of water, urine brine, etc."
Having worked on a dairy farm, I can attest to the highly acidic nature of cattle excrement, so perhaps the Rio Grande transitioned from painting just the ironwork black to painting the entire car black because the mineral red paints were not holding up as well to the byproduct of the cars' cargo.

The fine folks at Pacificng.org have a drawing of the D&RG-era stock car paint colors, made by Andrew Brandon, here:DRG5500 circa 1904



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2019 08:08PM by D&RGW 223.