Mike, my son;
Now that I’m fully dressed and ready to do what has to be done. I can answer your problems.
Besides the railroad name, number and reporting marks; for example: Canadian Pacific freight car number 150094, would have the reporting marks: CP 150094.
There would be a whole lot of information, generally called "Data".
This data included: inside diamentions, weight, load limit (Max. weight allowed), built date, lube date, rebuild date, where built, and in some cases, where the car should be returned to, after unloading. This would in some cases indicate the car was in "Captive service". Other thing you could see was: "Clean lading only", "Nailable steel floors", "Do not cleat".
On the inside of some box cars, you could find lettering and lines indicating how high to load different commodities, like corn, grain or other bulk stuff.
Yes, they used to ship grain in box cars, in fact they shipped just about everything in box cars at one time or another, including very high smelling hides, and other stuff that would turn you off of food.
Anything you want to know about North American railcar lettering, I can get answers for, from my friend Tom Hood, of CDS Lettering fame. He has done so much research on the subject, that it would be hard to find a better source of information.
Nobody would have noticed the “off color”…
