Welcome to the Golden West Service Freight Cars Page. These bright-blue cars were former SP, Cotton Belt and Rio Grande freight cars that were re-built and sold to various shortlines and then leased back by the railroad. Bottom line, this was an example of accountants trying to run a railroad. In any case, this was a futile attempt to breathe life into an ailing SP. However, the point of this page is not to argue the merits of why the SP did what it did, just to provide a repository of knowledge of these interresting cars.

A little background on the cars is probably in order. The SP started this program in the late 80's and as far as I know, it was still ongoing at the time of the SP's merger (assimilation) by the UP. At first glance, the fleet appears very scattered. As a GERNERAL rule (there are exceptions) the first digit of the road number represents the TYPE of car. Some examples are "1" for 100 ton box cars, "5" for covered hoppers, "6" for open hoppers and "7" for 70 ton boxcars. The next two digits indicate the SP's class designation for the cars. The last three digits were the numerical sequence of the cars in the series.

All cars were painted in the same dark blue scheme with the Golden West Service name and stacked block logo on the side of the car. There were several shortline railroads for which the cars were lettered over the years and a class one. These lines included the Galveston Railroad (GVSR), Ventura County Railroad (VCY) and Cole Rail (CRLE.) A few covered hoppers were also lettered for KCS early in the program, but were relettered for another road after a brief time.

GOLDEN WEST SERVICE Freight Car Photos:

Photo by: Lee A. Gautreaux

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