golden west changing to SSW? red UPFE's?

does anybody know anything about why alot of golden west boxcars are being remarked SSW? (formerly GVSR) they're not painting over the golden west logo but i have seen a couple that had pieces that got buffed at the same time the SSW was painted on.

another thing i've been noticing is that alot of old UPFE's are getting painted over dark burgundy/brownish red and they're being remarked. som just get marked UP, others are MP or something with a W in it. i can't remember.

can somebody please explain this to me? :confused:

its probably just as well.....

of all the refridgerator cars ive done, ive only liked one of them.

and it was a white bnfe.

i dont get enough reefridgerator cars. :(

I had a feeling this was coming...your news is actually good news.

Here's the deal:

Golden West Service was never really a rail company. Southern Pacific was in financial difficulty some years back, so some accountants got together and created GWS as a futile attempt to save SP some money. I don't know how the financial end works, but this "front" company bought some of SP's cars, painted them up as Golden West, and leased them back to SP. (Like I said, I have no idea why or how this would save anybody money, but whatever.) The Golden Wests needed reporting marks. Again, I don't know why, but they leased reporting marks from Galveston Railroad (GVSR), Ventura County Railroad (VCY), and Coe Rail (CRLE).

I don't know why this was all necessary, but the lease on those three reporting marks is up in 2002/2003, so all Golden Wests need new marks. (And this is all long after SP got absorbed by Union Pacific anyway.) So my fear was that all Golden Wests were going to get repainted or sold, and a lot of historic work would be lost (just like the recent Solid Cold repaint). If you're seeing Golden Wests merely restamped SSW, then that's good news because it beats a full repaint.

Just to be clear one more time: I have no fucking idea why REPORTING MARKS needed to be leased from anybody, or why they couldn't have just written GWS on all their cars (for Golden West Service) from day 1. My source is foggy on this and I am looking into it.

I had not heard of the other reefer issue, I'll have to look into that as well.

Oops...I just noticed you said that some of them got buffed as part of the restamp process...that's not the best news. Is the buff just a scrub, or is it fresh paint? What percentage got the full buff as opposed to just the SSW restamp? Are these cars ridgies, flats, ballast hoppers, or a mix of types?

I would be very interested in flicks of one of the restamped cars, particularly a detail shot of the new reporting marks. If anybody can come up with one for the Metal Heads bench let me know.

i recently have noticed this as well.... the red up's are ridges and the whole car is red.. The keep the union pacific logo on the car still... also the gvsr car some are just re stamped..I caught one couple of weeks ago with big5 and apart from 98'...

:o

two parts to my reply:

1. Golden Wests -

As was stated earlier (sort of), Golden West Service was a project by Greenbrier and SP to rebuild old SP cars (including its new aquisitions, DRGW and SSW) and bring them up to pace with service demands, as well as polish its image a little with shippers and the public. Greenbrier would rebuild the cars and lease them back to SP to cover the expenses.

As this was being put together (93) the ICC (now the surface transportation board) was in the process of "deprescription" of car hire rates. Car Hire rates are the established rates that a shipper pays to the owner of the car. "Deprescription" involved changing the way those rates were established, from the previous set formula, to a more market oriented price system that fluctuated. Shortline railroads were given a 10 year "grace period" from these changes, during which they would still use the old formula for car hire rates.

In order to "protect" these new cars from the deprescription, SP entered into an agreement with a few shortlines (GVSR, VCY, CRLE) where they would pay them a small amount of money on a regular basis to use the shortline's reporting marks to register these cars. This is where the whole " legal shell game" thing comes into play. Lots of paper work and leasing agreements so SP can save a bunch of cash.

Now jump to the present day. ten years from 93 brings us to 03, and as the exemption comes to a close, Union Pacific (who bought SP years ago) has decided that it's going to renumber the cars back to their original numbers so it can stop paying the shortlines for the use of their reporting marks. Its not saving money by being exempt anymore, so why should it? I've seen some VCY's showing up here with fresh stamp cubes and SP reporting marks lately. They dont even seem to be buffing anything else (ie Load Limits), just the minimum required to keep them on the road and legal.

So in summary....nothing is changing but the numbers. some pannels may eat it if they decide to re-stamp loads cause they were completely covered...but that happens anyways. Hope that clears everything up....

2- reefers.

UPFE's and most big reefer groups are involved in rebuild/repaint programs right now. Seems to be a rash of them as railroads are slowly working on snagging back some fast freight perishible business from the truckers. the solid colds have been discussed on here before. Not much to say, but anything old on a reefer probably has its days numbered....check out the last few issues of trains (they had a special at the begining of the year on a reefer service that shipped carrots to break down how things work, and whats happening in that area.) for the details.

cracked ass, ese, etc...

the golden wests i saw stamped SSW were flat and ridged boxcars. haven't seen no hoppers. one of them looked like the panels had been painted over at the same time the SSW was stamped on. there were a few toy tags on the stamped area. me and someone else did the flat one end to end, but i don't know if it'll run...

and i been seeng alot of these redish UP's that used to be upfe's. i know they were upfe's, because my tags from when they were upfe's have bled through on alot of them. i've done a few of them and i seen certain people from arizona up on them with fills. they also have painted dates. i justsaw some today with the date 9-02 as when it was repainted! fucked huh? i guess i should concentrate on those for a sec... what do you think... newly painted cars run longer? i wonder if they ru on the same routes as before? :confused:

dude! cracked ass...

why are some of the upfe's that get repainted red, getting marked with a MP? i think i seen em with a WP also?

...no one mentioned the fact that as consolidation continues amongst the major RR co's. more cars are being re-stamped, re-painted, or simply scrapped as new car orders come in. A lot of companies are switching over to the "tall-boy" boxcars simply because they cover the same ground, but can carry 20% more cargo. As for the GVSR's and UP reefers getting repainted, well, that is taking places in stages. Very similar to the acquisition of hundreds of old CP newsprint boxcars by QGRY....some of those cars simply had new calls put on, other had new calls as well as panels stamped, other got a complete overhaul. It goes in stages with any company because the cost of re-painting a fleet of cars in extremely high, and at the same time, the company has to maintain as many of their cars in circulation as possible in order to keep the revenue coming in. It's gonna take years for UP to finish re-painting all the old reefers they have in their fleet, and a lot of them are being scrapped as the new UP Chilled Express cars are phased it. Like any company, the RRs are trying to maintain a good public image, with reliable and clean cars available to transport anyone's goods.

As far as reefers go, be warned, they will continue to shrink in numbers as the global market continues to expand. Inter-modal is the fastest growing divison of rail transportation, mostly because it ties in perfectly with the now ruling trucking industry. CN recently acquired a whole pile of new reefers, but they aren't the ones we like to see. It's all high-end container reefers which is where the tendencies are these days because anything that can be taking directly from a train and dropped on a flatbed 18-wheeler is more cost effective than a boxcar, simply because it bypasses the whole unloading process....it comes from the ship, right onto the inter-modal, then gets dumped off directly onto a waiting truck and it's gone....faster, cleaner and cheaper.

Re: dude! cracked ass...

Originally posted by killtoy

why are some of the upfe's that get repainted red, getting marked with a MP? i think i seen em with a WP also?

I don't know this one - perhaps Ese can fill us in. MP and WP (Missouri Pacific and Western Pacific) were smaller railroads that got merged with or bought by UP, so I would expect those marks to be replaced with updated UP marks, not the other way around. The deprescription thing happening with Golden Wests can't apply here either, because UP was obviously not paying themselves to put UPFE marks on cars to save money.

Bottom line info for practical heads: Paint these freshpaints, avoid the numbers, and shit ought to run. Also, all of this repaint/restamp shit is all "paper" transactions, there's no change in car ownership - so the routes these cars run should not change at all.

....the red repaints are marked MP because despite the fact that they are indeed all technically UP cars since the aforementioned merger, the specific cars continue to run along the old MP, WP, SP routes that they travelled prior to being bought up by UP. CN does the same thing with Wisconsin Central and Illinois Central....everything else gets stamped CNA.

all i know is all those old porn, mek, awr etc. etc. pieces that were on those ssw (cotton belt) and sp (sothern pacific) box cars from the early 1990s dissapeared. i was under the impression that they became gvsr/vcy. and judging by cracked first post this may be true.

i really wish they hadnt have done that. there wes a lot of good wc graff on those sp and ssw boxs.

what ever happened to the emax-im assuming they suffered a similar fate. i remember them being here by the hundreds. one day i go to sunnyside and theres nothing there but hoppers.

Well, the Golden West thing happened in '93, so any SP or SSW with the old west coast stuff that did NOT disappear before '93 suffered some other fate.

I do know those Hydra-Cushion flats (SP and SSW) are in terrible shape and a lot must have simply been scrapped in the last ten years.

you're right about those Hydra-Cushion flats

i haven't seen one of those fuckers for like 5 years. there used to be a grip of em around at all the yards. they were always real rusted. i seen one sitting on the side of the highway when i was driving through texas a few months ago. just some toys on it though. lotta dope pieces must have died on those...

Re: you're right about those Hydra-Cushion flats

Originally posted by killtoy

lotta dope pieces must have died on those...

exactally-all that old pre-93 wc shit.

glad i got fliks.

re: red upfe's... found something!

http://www.trainweb.org/nwrp/up/up130251data.htm

check this link for the stats on a red upfe. it says it was formerly a rail box.

whew! i was so worried that all my upfe's were doomed. i never get rail boxes over here anyways so fuck it. :idea:

thats a regular ridged boxcar not a reefer. all UPFE's are reefers, and since railbox has never owned any reefers, no UPFEs could be ex-railboxes.

that's why i'm happy about finding this.

that means that the upfe's aren't getting repainted which is what i was worried was happening. i guess the tags that i saw bleed through on the red up's were from rbox's or some shit.

what other companies got absorbed by union pacific? i wonder what other cars are getting repainted into red up boxcars?

also i've seen some of the red up box's with pieces intentionally stamped out. even where they were off the numbers. i take that as a bad sign. i'll try to get a digi to go and flick them when they're laid up over here so i can show you fools. i think y'all know more about this shit than my ignorrant ass. i was gonna kidnap a worker at gunpoint and make him tell me what the deal is, but with you guys around i guess i won't need to do that. :huh?:

hate to be a killjoy, killtoy....but the UPFE fleet IS still being repainted, refurbished, revamped and all that shit. This started a few years ago as UP was trying to keep customers happy by fixing up all the old reefers they had. Seems customers weren't so keen to do business when they saw their goods being transported in poorly maintained rustbuckets....so UP bought up the old Solid Cold cars, fixed the ones they could, sold the rest off for scrap metal, took their old yellow UPFE's, repainted those as best they could, and then started to phase in the brand spankin' new UP Chilled Express cars that we all dream about. This is in direct competition with BNSF who is the other major perishable-goods-in-boxcars carrier, who bought a bunch of new reefers a few years ago as well already having a fleet of cleaner cars.

TRUSTEVIL...

check your email (burf)...

i wont have net access but my cell is in there.. hit me up if you can help...

oh, and freights suck, paint transit.

fags.

that's UberFag to you, mr.seeking.

it is sad to know that the solid colds are being taken out of the system.... though i welcome the bnsf excess ht's and the chilled express.

*bump*

i think alot of those hydra cushion cars are stuck over here in the midwest cause i catch those every ounce inawhile in long lines...usually all old west coast stuff, and very old and rusty looking..

the rusty cars are the best...something about them

niggidy nerdsssss fukin losers.

^ u bumped this?

this is an old ass thread to bring back.

although its kind of weird reading about this over 4 years later now that the UPFE's are going away really fast and the golden wests made it through with only being restamped and not re-painted, for the time being.

RED UPFEs?????????

They dont seem to be going away too fast. Its been damn near 5 years since this

thread and I still seem UPFes regularly.

The gold UPFEs are slowly turning into the white babyridge ARMNs which do NOT have the Chilled Express logo, but simply the UP shield and "Building America" slogan. Some people I know call them WUPFEs ("white UPFEs"). All the Chilled Expresses are flat (no ridges) and I believe are mostly rebuilt Solid Colds.

I see less UPFEs at my few reefer spots these days, but they're far from all gone.