PC: Age and PC Passenger Car Paint

[Philip.Kuhl@xxxxxxx]

I'm 43 (for a couple of months more, at least!), so guess I qualify for
membership among those folks who not only remember PC in its entirety, but
who got their grounding in the PC predecessor roads -- I'm a
dyed-in-the-wool Green Teamer.

Rob Carlo asked a question a few weeks ago about the color of PC
stainless-steel passenger car roofs, and whether they were supposed to be
silver or black -- having seen photographs of both.  Both styles seeming
correct to my mind, I plopped into the VCR Green Frog's Penn Central series
to see what I could find -- and indeed I see both silver and black tops,
although far more silver than black.  Since the Green Frog series is shot
mostly along the former New York Central, I decided to check their New York
Central tapes to see what I could find:  Sure enough, the NYC cars also
appear in both silver and black top versions, with silver being the most
common.  Then a review of Geoffrey Doughty's "New York Central's Great Steel
Fleet 1948-1967" showed the only fluted-side cars with clearly black roofing
to be baggage-coach combines (probably from the American Car & Foundry order
of 1947, but all of those were scrapped by 1968).  So I'm confised too!

Phil