As some of you know, the city of Rocky Mount NC is restoring ACL office car 303 and wants to paint the car as it appeared circa the late 1940s. The question has come up of roof color during that period. It's clear that office cars and other heavyweight passenger equipment normally had black roofs in the 1960s, but we have no definitive information about roof painting in the 1940s/50s. If anyone either remembers clearly which color office cars used, or has a painting diagram of that era, please let us know.

-- Larry Goolsby (LGoolsby@aphsa.org), May 01, 2001

Answers

I worked for the ACL Mechanical Department in the late 40's - mid 50's. I believe Office Car roofs were black - the cars closely matched all other conventional passenger cars except for gold striping and lettering. That wasn't an item one puts in the memory bank to recall 50 years later, but I'm sure they were not silver or any shade of red, and the only other reasonable color would have been green to match the car body. Black's the best bet.

-- D. H. Noble (rke_dhn@excite.com), October 20, 2001.

Larry, I went to RM in search of this car this past weekend. It is still at the city facility, and all that can be seen of the car is the rear platform. It is surrounded by a very snug, canvas type qounset hut. If they haven't blasted the roof yet, have them try to sand an area on the roof, and keep going until they hit metal. If they use various grit papers, they should be able to feather each layer of paint, and see what color was applied in what order. I had done this when I was restoring a Chevelle years ago. Just a thought...

Russell

-- Russell Underwood (Jay611@home.com), May 02, 2001.