I saw a picture of a C&WC truck in a picture on page 83 of Goolsby's passenger book and it got me thinking - what color did the ACL and C&WC paint their maintenance of way vehicles? Purple sounds obvious, but I am not sure.

Also, did ACL have their logo on the doors or just letters like the C&WC truck?

I love these thought provoking questions -

Larry Neal

-- Larry Neal (aclfan@yahoo.com), August 29, 2002

Answers

Hey Larry, me too. I can't speak for the C&WC, although I assume their vehicles followed ACL practice, at least in the 1950s. The ACL trucks I saw were always black with white stenciling. Most did have a small ACL script herald on the door, although the version without the state names. While I am not aware of any purple trucks, the glorious color did get spread around on some other company equipment including Gradalls. Also several types of smaller cranes, rail- mounted and otherwise, such as Burro cranes and locomotive cranes, were purple with aluminum bands (see Paul Faulk's ACL color guide). ACL's LCL highway truck trailers were also purple in the 50s (but not the truck cabs - they too were black I believe). According to paint diagrams, the trailers were repainted dark blue later on, but I saw only the purple ones. And then, to use up the remaining supply of purple paint, ACL's original (1959) group of H-1 wood chip hoppers had purple interiors (really).

-- Larry Goolsby (LGoolsby@aphsa.org), August 29, 2002.