Purple ACL cars

did they ever actually have purple cars???

Heavyweight in purple.

The most purple I've seen in their streamlined cars is stainless with only purple letterboards, but I'm no expert.

The Williams engines, from what I've seen, are not a prototypical purple. They appear too dark, more plum color, as you say. So if MTH cars have the same non-prototypical color, those will be a closer match if you want purple cars. I had a Lionel ACL F-3 set (and Lionel ACL purple Geeps also), and their color was more purple, closer to prototype. Another option is to find streamlined passenger cars lettered for ACL - the real ones weren't purple, but stainless (silver), sometimes with purple letterboards, but sometimes not. With silver cars, of course, getting a color match with the engines isn't a problem.

This is the ACL engine purple:

ACL Passenger car where fluted stainless steel cars with black roofs and purple letter boards. The only purple passenger in the fleet where several rebuilt heavyweight cars that under went a modernization program to be used with the new lightweight cars.

Sean, you are correct.  ACL did rebuild and modernize a few heavyweights and painted them purple.  They also had some baggage cars in the purple color.  I agree about the wrong shade of purple on the Williams E7.  I have that and also MTH E6, F3 and GP7.  I like the MTH colors better but it is probably not prototypical either.  I have both sets of MTH streamline passenger cars.  One set painted purple and the other stainless steel with black roofs.  The silver ones are closer to prototype colors at least.  The purple color pattern that MTH used is a fantasy but they still look good.

Ray

There was a Benedictime Abbey which had two shades of violet (purple) vestments.  One set had a more redish tint, used in Lent.  Another was so dark blue, it looked close to "Jenk's Blue".  The Sacristan had a slight amount of colorblindness, but was a railfan.  Hence to get the right sets out, they were coded "ACL" and "MoPac"!

The E unit above seems to be that "Lent Violet: for SAL WHEN NEW.  However,   colors do change due to exposure to weather and sun.

Usually. Apparently sometimes no purple, though.

(and another shot of The Champion showing the correct color ACL purple; "Moultrie" is the passenger car behind the engine, which car has the purple letter boards)

01-Moultrie with The Champion at Spencer, NC

One of our club members came from out of town Sunday with his MTH 'Champion' ABA plus ELEVEN ACL passengers. Quite a sight!

The history of the color is that ACL's famous Royal Purple paint was used because it was the favorite color of the railroad's president. Here's some more information:

"The Atlantic Coast Line gave up on its Royal

Purple paint following retirement of long-time

president Champ Williams in 1957. The purple

paint was a favorite of Mr. Williams. However, it

faded quickly and chalked under the hot southern

sun, so much so that the locomotives had

been on a 24-month repaint cycle in order to

maintain a respectable appearance. The cost of

that repaint program was too much for new Coast

Line President Tom Rice. So, with Mr. Williams

gone the railroad quickly moved to change paint

on the railroad’s locomotives to an easier-to-maintain

workman-like black trimmed with

yellow striping and aluminum-colored lettering.

The change of paint took nearly a decade to

complete with both purple and black locomotives

working coupler-to-coupler during that time. At

least one GP7 remained in Royal Purple paint as

late as 1966."

I have the 1st issues of ACL F3's A-B-B-A that MTH did in 1996. I try to be prototypical as much as I can but when I saw the Painted Aluminum passenger car to go with the ACL F3's I had to have them. It was the same feeling I got when I saw the Lionel Catalog with the Illinois Central F3's and the IC chocolate passengers. I know the IC never had passengers F3's but the Lionel set was a beautiful set. The same could be said about the MTH ACL Painted set too.