(erielack) yellow diamonds

[Edward Mines <ed_mines_@_yahoo.com>]

If you look at the Culotta Kline freight car book recently offered by the NMRA you will find several recently painted Erie freight cars where the diamond looks slightly darker than the lettering. I assume that these diamonds were the yellow color.
   
  When I first became interested in Erie freight cars I corresponded with Larry DeYoung and asked him about these yellow diamonds. The 2 big decal suppliers at the time - Champion & Walthers - had yellow diamonds in some of their freight sets. Larry was noncommittal. I would write "look at this picture or that picture in Erie Power. It looks like the diamond is a slightly darker color".
   
  It was a revelation when a freight car historian found builders documents which stated that an entire lot of new cars were painted with yellow diamonds near the end of WWII. Then a picture of an older car with a yellow diamond showed up in one of the all color steam books from another railroad.
   
  I agree that the yellow diamonds necessitated a paint shop stocking an additional color of paint so maybe only some of cars repainted just after WWII received yellow diamonds.
   
  About 1947 Erie started using the very large diamonds (almost twice the height of the older diamonds). I have a B&W photo of a line of cars waiting for repair where one hopper had a large diamond and another car has a smaller, darker diamond.
   
  I'm interested in Erie freight cars just after WWII. I think that there were 4 different varieties of diamonds on cars in service at that time - an older, slightly smaller version of a white diamond on a black background, the most common small white diamond on a black background, the same diamond without the black background (starting about 1940) and finally the yellow diamond (same stencil as the proceeding 2) on a black background.
   
  I hear the aforementioned Culotta Cline book is almost sold out. It has more than a few Erie freight cars.
   
  Ed Mines

       
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