August 1947 NYC F3A 1617 leads a refrigerator car train at Churchhille NY Ed Nowak photo - Roger Hensley Collection
Impressive, they appear to be all Merchant's Dispatch reefers. I wonder if this was a PR photo similar to this one for the introduction of Pacemaker cars.
Yes. In both cases, the factory was told to hold several days production so that perfectly matched trains could be photographed.
I'm not sure (since it's diesels) but I think that was one of the original "lightning stripe" paint schemes. They were truncated and not continuous as the later ones were. Correct me if I'm wrong. Nice photo, Roger. Nowak did nice work.
Correct. From my notes on the lightning stripe scheme history: The “Lightning Stripe” scheme began with the delivery of the first road freight diesel locomotives, the EMD FTs, in 1946. It was an austere black with white (or silver) lettering and numbering on the A and B units. The front of the A unit had six vertical stripes. At the bottom of the carbody the stripes then split, three to each side and extended along the bottom of the carbody only as far as the numberboards. There were no zig-zags. The red NYCS oval logo was superimposed on the vertical stripes. Within months that simple scheme was being superseded by the more familiar “Lightning Stripe” (5 white stripes on a zig-zag light gray band) that continued about ¾ of the length of the carbody. The vertical part of the striping was now separated with the red oval logo sandwiched between. The B units were still all black (no gray band or striping). By 1949 the “Lightning Stripe” scheme was expanded to the full length of the carbody on A and B units of all road freight diesel locomotives. By the early-1960s, the color schemes were being simplified. The “Lightning Stripe” gave way to the “Cigar Band” – a new red, white, and black oval logo superimposed on a white band on the nose – sometimes just the oval logo. B units reverted to the no-striping. Hood diesels had a white sill stripe (or none at all) and some form of the oval logo with white lettering and numbers.
