Re: Red Passenger cars in the era of Pullman Green on the D&RGW

From:
[hon3annual.com]

In the 1930’s there were at least ten of these cars that were painted red with “D&RGW” stenciled below the windows like MoW equipment. The two theories are that these were cars pulled from storage and used to transport the Civilian Conservation Corps workers on the system, and the paint kept them from being mixed in with cars used in regular passenger or that they were already in standby service with the MoW fleet. Hence the lettering and the red paint, which was the standard MoW color on the Rio Grande until they changed to gray in the 1940’s. It is entirely possible that both are true to an extent. The AFEs for the red paint exist at the Colorado Railroad Museum for some of the cars, but none seem to detail the reason behind the change.