GOLDEN WEST

OK HERE IS MY OBSERVATION .IVE NOTICED THAT HERE IN THE MIDWEST ON THE OFF OCCASION THAT I FIND A GW IN A SPOT IT HAS ABOUT 80% CHANCE OF HAVING ALL THE PANNELS TAKEN EVEN ON A TRIP OUT WEST LAST YEAR I GOT SHOT DOWN ON A FEW CHANCES TO CACTH THEM BECUSE THEY WERE ALL GRILLED.SO HOW OFTEN DO YOU GUYS FIND A CLEAN ONE,IVE NOTICED SOME CREWS SOLUTION TO THIS IS TO JUST BLAST A BACKROUND CLOUD THE WHOLE LENGTH AND GO OVER THE OLD STUFF.WELL I JUST THOUGHT THIS TOPIC MIGHT BRING UP SOME CONVERSATION....

the lay up literally a stones throw distance from my old apartment was regurlarly 20-30 golden west flats and maybe a ridgie and a hopper or two. fresh ups from LA and the bay on about two thirds.

i have noticed that as well....granted i dont see that many out in my parts, the ones that i have seen/painted have about a 90% chance of having pannels done on them...i think it has to do with the buff cycle and them not doing it very much, but i could be wrong...

yep. around here they always have at least a panel taken...

high percentage.

you know its bad when you try to catch a tag or drop a sketch and youre literally digging to get space on a ladder or by limits to pull one off.

when i do get to see em, theyre all blasted to fuck with west coast stuff. rarley do i see a clean one.

ive managed to catch a couple clean ones...

but it was so long ago i cant say i was proud of the outcome now....

i'm not like taking numbers down, but the ones that i see here are often the same month to month or similar, that strikes me as wierd for such highly travelled boxcars, anyone else caught this phenomenon? or what other companies are likely to have cars in dedicated service?

as for the question-completely clean or buffed i haven't really ever seen.

when ever we use to get them....they were always full of west coast stuff...from 98 or earlyer....they would come in a line of about 2 to 12 and only about 1 or 2 of them would have a open panel....ive hit alot of golden west but this was back in 98 and shit and my shit was very ugly then....we never get em anymore and that really pisses me off....everyounce in a while ill see 1 or 2 travilling with the local gondolas but never layed up anymore.....i would catch kero bus drane payne slej drone push. all of that shit on the daily.you can see ost of what im talking about on my site down below this post....man i miss 97 and 98...all we get now is hoppers and grain cars....fuck ...

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had a nice golden west flat in my spot today it had a vegas tbk 01 i think on one side and a 95 push msk and msk fill on the other

could someone help me out as to what's packed in those? Gvsr flats or chtt flats etc...if it's lumber what kind specifically? It might make all the difference in the world. thanks

they ship all sorts or shit in gvsr's so its hard to tell what one might have in it....

I'm luckier than most of you, I guess - my chances of finding a spot on Golden Wests is better than 20%.

I'm careful what I go over on them. There are plenty of names and crews where I won't even touch a hollow or tag, but there's also a lot of crap on them - sloppy fillins and scribble, mostly over the numbers. But I'm wary of going over even some of that shit, especially if it's old. In my area there are a few trains that run with old stuff by Spray and Mast, mostly tags and hollows. That hollow S! by Spray is nothing that would grab you stylewise, but a lot of it is from '87, so it has historical value. I save that stuff when I see it (and still feel depressed over one time where I didn't look closely enough at the hand and blasted over a Mast throwup). So who's to say that I'm not wiping out some old, classic though not necessarily cutting edge shit when I blast the small stuff on these west coast cars? I try to stay educated and stay selective. Accidents are going to happen, but writers who respect what came before can reduce some losses.

As to buffing, well, there obviously isn't much of that on these cars - lots of stamped numbers though. I don't believe there is a Golden West Service anymore, as a company. The cars are owned by Galveston Railroad (GVSR marks), Ventura County (VCY marks), and some by Coe Rail (hoppers marked CRLE). I suspect a massive repaint will occur someday, so everyone should be documenting these cars with flicks.

As to contents and routes, I don't know if it's the whole story, but many Golden West flats and baby ridge cars are insulated and carry non-perishable food (canned goods, etc.). They also tend to load and unload at the same couple of dozen cities nationwide, so you may see the same car more than once even though it's not a local for you.

yeah man, good info, i suspected as much, do you happen to know when they broke up the fleet?

I don't know that one.

im guessing around 99-00 since thats when they stoped coming here as much as they did....but thats jsut a guess....who knows

golden wests are a guarantee in my parts. i get a lot of clean paneled ridges. the flat panels are usually rocked, but mostly filled with crap. a lot of older gems that have been destroyed by gangs and toys who don't know any better. just yesterday i saw an old school jase with a klover tag on it. all i could think was this guy had to kidding me. toys...when will they learn. i can't wait till the freight hype ends and most of you guys jump back on the legal wall wagon. for you true heads, keep producin!

i see them almost everyday, sometimes out of nowhere i'll see one rolling that has nothing on it at all, but yes, us westcoast folks done grilled almost all of them.

...yes, golden west is no longer a company...as far as repaints in the near future i doubt it, at least this is what some railfans told me...

...i see clean ones role through here all the time but have never caught one layed up...

In my area all I used to see were GoldenWests. That was like from 95-98. Things started to get a little different the last 4 years though. Still plenty of open panels on the gvsr's though. At my spots anyway.

I get those shits all the time. I get a lot of clean ones. but that never lasts, most of the la heads (who hit fr8's) like to hit the golden west because they go up the coast, or so i've heard, and do not get buffed as much. I had a wicked fever to hitting those and for a while i would hit nothing but golden wests, but it passed and i now hit another company where the number start with AGR###. No company name but I love how rusted they are.....

Now Golden West Flats are a rarety in my layups.

ive only got close to 2 gvsr's in my entire career as a writer. ive see them running often, most times crushed with west coast shit. earlier this year we saw 2 in this layup. the only 2 cars in the layup. one side faced the wall the other side was open so that means 4 pannels right. well the one pannel that was clean was in the light. so we could only bust thro ups on it. the car that was in the good spot had some garbage on the two pannels, but it also had some pieces floating on the top half of the car (and they were high cubes too) fortunately for us the lower pieces were not really anything we felt bad about going over. but after looking at the fliks i think to myself damn cali must be a really ill place for a car to roll around looking like this. i told the guy i painted with the next time we see this car our pieces will probably be underneath some one elses pieces...oh well thats the rules of the game.