Re: 40' reefer color variations

Hi Gordon,
Sloan's D&RGW NG freight car book gives a date of spring 1949 when the ART orange painted reefers started to show up. The shop at Alamosa was supplied with the ART orange paint by ART, to repaint the reefers with, since Perlman discontinued the routine painting of the freight cars.
Some of the 40' cars were still in ART orange paint as late as 1967. They were car numbers: 157,
163, 166, 167, & 168.
Even some of the 30' reefers were painted with ART orange sides as well. Car number 52 was one of them.
So if your modeling time period is between 1949 until the end of freight operations in 1968, it would be correct to have some reefers painted up this way.
Another side note is that some of the 40' reefers never were repainted with the flying Rio Grande logo, they retained the older Royal Gorge/Moffat Tunnel hearld until the end of operations. Most of these cars were from the first batch built car numbers 150-161.
I hope this helps,
Jeff