Hopper Paint Schemes in the 1970s

[NW Mailing List]

There are a few prominent places I'd look to help answer your questions on lettering for NW hoppers in the 70's. First, is Andrew Dow's N&W Coal Car book, if you can find a copy. (Personally, would love to see the NWHS get with Andrew and increase the content post writing to include the balance of the TopGon rebody program, and additional info on coal cars purchased up to the CR merger.)

Second, Ed Painter and Drayton Blackgrove of 'Delay in Block' Productions and of ScaleTrains has a series of Ed's railfan videos from across the Pokey in the 70's and 80's that are available on YT. A couple of other videos that come to mind at "Welch, by N&W", I forget the company name, and Pentrex's "Along the Pocahontas District". Both are set in the late 80's and early 90's, but you will get a feel of how the car fleet looked at those times.

Hope this helps.

Russ Goodwin
Oakwood, GA

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Sent: Monday, September 8, 2025 2:27:45 PM
To: 'nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org' <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Subject: Hopper Paint Schemes in the 1970s

I grew up in the 80s, so I didn't get to witness 1970s era N&W firsthand, but it's probably my favorite N&W era for diesels.  While there are a variety of sources to help identify what classes of hopper cars were in service, I'm curious about the mix of paint schemes.  Looking through "Norfolk And Western In Color Volume 3", it looks like the 1960s era half-moon/hamburger schemes, albeit with consolidated lube plates and other updated data, were actually more common than cars in the NW scheme that would have been the current scheme at the time.

Can anyone else confirm this, or know of other sources I should look at?

Thanks
Marty Flick
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