Sunday, August 21, 2011

The 'Bible' of Paint

A nice recommendation from VIAphile Mark Kaluza today. The question was posed on an online forum: Were all VIA's ex-CN cars wearing the VIA blue & yellow scheme by 1980?

Mark answered in a a subsequent post entitled 'The Bible of Paint'*: Many of VIA's fleet never received the blue & yellow treatment at all. I am going to suggest since VIA's fleet is so ginormous and too extensive to get into car by car, that you consult Eric's latest book. Jakob Mueller contributed a spreadsheet including just the information you're looking for, regarding individual cars and repaint (or not) dates. Exhaustive work on his part, and quite an interesting read for any sort of VIAphile out there.

Mark has helpfully identified one of the best parts of my book, and one of its most valuable uses, namely using Jakob's paint transition data for VIA's cars to answer just such a question. I included similar data for VIA's locomotives and RDC's based on my observations made during the transition era, when the shops were busiest covering over CP and CN paint.

That's VIA-CN 5217 at Kingston on December 24, 1976, likely the first Canadian Flyer car to wear the blue & yellow.

Watch for an announcement here in the next few days.

Highball!
Eric

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