Railroaders: Little Messages on Freight Cars?

Factual Questions
1

I was watching a freight train go by the other day. I had a front-row seat as I was actually in parking lot built in the center of a railroad wye junction. A lot of
N-S freight passes here to go E-W, and vice versa.

Anyway, besides little stenciled remarked for maintenance, there were all kinds of, what I’d call, “idiot-proof” messages. Like:
a) Close and latch doors before moving - on a box car
b) Hammering will contaminate product - on a closed hopper car carrying a powder
c) Return to Southern when empty (I had to LOL at that one! Like a milk crate?)
d) Fasten containers before shipping - on a flat bed car
e) A CSX Quality Car - on a coal car (What “quality”? A coal car is a coal car, no?)

When did such messages begin to appear on freight cars? I WAG it must because there was once a passenger car full of lawyers chasing after it, mostly…?

  • Jinx
2

C) yes, like expensive milk crates. Cars are leased, borrowed and tracked.

3

I doubt these messages are as recent an innovation as the OP suggests - railways have always been dangerous places, so there’s always been a concientiousness about safety that seems astonishing when viewed from the outside. For example, ever since the very first railways built outside of private lines in England, there has always been a legal obligation on the railway company to keep lineside fences in order to stop the public ‘straying’ onto the tracks.

4

A CSX Quality Car

That’s just plain ol’ advertising.