The Bluegrass Railroad Museum has a Seaboard System Safety Instruction Car which is sitting on ACL 6-wheel trucks. When the car was an SCL car it wore number 775000. While some of us would prefer to keep the car as a Seaboard Car, the people who make the decisions have decided that they would like to return the car to ACL purple. Here are the questions: Was this car an ACL car? What type of car was it originally? Who turned it into a Safety Car? What color(s) was this car as a Safety Instruction Car? What color schemes did it originally wear? Was it ever painted purple? If you can answer any or all of these questions or tell me where I can look for the answers please e-mail me at KA4GBBill@aol.com, thank you for your help

-- Bill Dennehy (KA4GBBill@aol.com), November 04, 2002

Answers

I have not had time to fully research the car's history, but briefly, the Seaboard Air Line converted it around the early 1950s from a Pullman tourist sleeper into an instruction car and numbered it 75000. On the SAL it was painted Pullman green with dulux yellow lettering. It probably retained these colors briefly when first repainted after the 1967 merger as Seaboard Coast Line 775000. In any case, by 1971 the 775000 had been converted to a Safety Car and was repainted white with bright green lettering. It ran in these colors until at least 1982. As for the ACL trucks, that is odd but apparently the original trucks were swapped out at some point and ACL trucks substituted. Assuming the car number is correct, the car itself was never owned by ACL and thus was never painted purple. Normally I would be all for any piece of equipment being painted in those glorious colors, but I must come down on the side of historical accuracy and say that this car shouldn't be a candidate. Why not paint it in the distinctive white SCL safety scheme? That is one that was certainly unusual and eye-catching. If interested I can supply photos of the car in both the SAL and SCL schemes - contact me off- list.

-- Larry Goolsby (LGoolsby@aphsa.org), November 06, 2002.

I've tried to call somebody back at your place for two weeks but I keep getting the answering service..... my office number is 859-281- 9221 if somebody wants to call me here.

Buck Dean, Webmaster

BTW, regular readers, the Bluegrass RR Museum is just west of Lexington (Versailles,KY) just before you come across the really spindly Southern bridge over the Kentucky River at Tyrone. abd

-- Buck Dean (bdean@jngray.com), November 05, 2002.