New Haven Hunter Green Lightweight Cars

Number 90 posted:

I'm curious as to whether New Haven ever completed repainting the Pullman-Standard postwar lightweight passenger cars (which featured fluted stainless steel siding with a hunter green window panel and letterboards) into the McGinnis red.  Are there any New Haven experts out there who would care to comment on whether any cars remained hunter green until Amtrak day?  Just curious.

Tom;

I’m no expert, but I would suggest you post your question in the great thread on the New Haven...

https://ogrforum.com/...41#84776363659651941

You can find some very knowledgeable folks there.

The book The New Haven Railroad's Streamline Passenger Fleet 1934 - 1953 by Goeffrey Doughty says on page 113 that "not all of the New Haven's stainless steel sleepers carried a green or orange band through the window portion of the car."  On the same page there is a really bad photo in color of the sleeper Lookout Point.  This sleeper was transferred to PC ownership in 1969.  The photos shows a green Penn Central name board and what may be a green window band.  On page 220 the book says "Penn Central renumbered the survivors into the 2200-series and some were even painted "deep water green," lettered in white with two intersecting "PC" letters where once the New Haven heralds had been.  Many of the postwar stainless steel cars were renumbered into the 2500-series, receiving similar treatment with a green stripe where the McGinnis red-orange had been in the window section of the car."

I know this doesn't answer your question.  However, some the cars that did survive to PC did get green window bands.   More research is needed.   NH Joe

Tom,

In "The New Haven Railroad in the McGinnis Era" by Mark J. Frattasio (2003) on page 134 is a photograph of a New Haven Pullman-Standard postwar streamlined stainless steel sheathed passenger car with fluted sides and the red-orange window band with modernized "NH" logo. Part of the caption states: "None of the New Haven's stainless steel sheathed passenger cars escaped getting the new image treatment. All of these cars got the new image colors and logo as a group during the summer of 1955."

I cannot now independently verify the accuracy of this statement and will post in this thread any further information that I find...

MELGAR

All of the New Haven's lightweight cars with a window band were repainted in a very short time frame - between late spring and early fall of 1955. Because of this, pictures and film of mixed color consists are very rare.

Some sleepers had bare stainless steel window bands and they remained bare. 

In the Penn Central era, many cars were repainted with green window bands (a different shade of green than what the New Haven used).

Further clarification on the window band colors:

On page 90 of "The New Haven's Streamline Passenger Fleet 1934-1953," by Geoffrey Doughty, referring to the "Postwar Pullmans," he states: "...very few made it into Amtrak Service."

On pages 113 and 114, Doughty shows photos (taken in 1967 and '68) of two sleeping cars in the "Beach" series with unpainted window bands. On page 120, he states that under Penn Central "many of the postwar stainless steel cars" ... received ... "a green stripe where the McGinnis red-orange had been in the window section of the car."

On page 538 of "New Haven Power 1838-1968" by Alvin Stauffer, the author shows a photo of one of the 27 "Point" series sleepers and states that they were the "only New Haven sleepers with a painted window band that was olive green as built but repainted red-orange under the McGinnis administration."

MELGAR

Quite different greens !!  NH had a nice green.  PC used what we from the NYC called "nationalization green", an ugly shade of grunge green.

Thanks for all the info, fellows.  I have always had a soft spot for that fleet of 1948-era streamlined cars with the hunter green stripe, script Hew Haven logo, and the rounded roof ends.  I have only seen the green ones in photos, as I did not get to New England until the mid-1970's.  I old see that they went on a re-painting rampage after Patrick McGinnis became President, but wondered if they followed through completely.  Apparently, they did.