Order as a single car or a 3 car set. The single car will be either car number 173819, 182324, or 753667. The set will have all three numbers.
In 1984 the C&NW introduced their Pentone, or Safety, yellow color to their locomotive and caboose fleet. This color became closely associated with J.A.Zito, and many individuals referred to this color as “Zito” yellow. Between May 1984 and December 1984, the C&NW began to repaint some of their freight car fleet with some 50 of their PS 4750 cuft cars receiving this new paint scheme. Most of the cars that received this new paint were painted by the C&NW car shops in Clinton IA. There appears that there was no set series of cars planned for this project, but rather cars were just drawn from the fleet to be repainted. The most distinguishing feature of this scheme was the use of the black outline System herald instead of a multicolored herald. These black outline heralds were primarily found on un-repainted, but patched, secondhand freight equipment obtained from the Rock Island. Previous variants of the outline herald, usually associated with the “Employee Owned” in place of “Chicago and System”, were found on both previously delivered ACF and Pullman Standard covered hoppers. Eventually this black outline herald was retired and replaced with the multicolored red, white and black herald. Another unusual item found on these cars was that the NEW date painted on the car side remained as the date the car was built rather than the date that the car was repainted. This date remained as it was due to the fact that the cars received no major mechanical or upgrade work during the painting process, so no updating of the NEW date was required.
We have produced these cars in 3 different numbers, representing cars from 3 different series of covered hoppers. Car 182324 was built by PS in 5/1981, and was repainted 10/4/1984. Car 753667 was built by PS as RI 133380 in 12/1975 and was repainted 10/26/1984. Car 173819 was built by PS in 12/1975 and received its coat of Pentone paint on 12/26/1984. All of these cars remained on the C&NW roster until the 1995 UP merger. These HO scale cars are Accurail 3 bay covered hopper kits, custom decorated for the Society by Accurail and include Accumate couplers
