Number Boards

[NW Mailing List]

Hi Evan

I expected Richard Shell to have jumped in on this, but since I've not seen anything from him so far. Richard and I probably are what might be considered numberboard kings, we had arranged with an official in motive power back in the early 1980s to have boards pulled from units going to scrap, and we purchased them from the railroad. I think I have over 100 different units represented in my collection. Richard and I stopped buying after a couple of years, simply because it was getting to be so many, and it was costing us way too much.

I'll speak only to original N&W EMD units.

The original number boards were what we refer to as "insert" number boards, in other words, the glass board on the end of the unit was a piece of safety plate glass, in a rubber gasket, hung behind that in the carbody of the unit, is a lighted box that held interchangable numbers. Up to a four digit unit number was  possible with these boxes and numbers. I believe they were painted or silkscreened on white plexiglass pieces, without measuring one, I'd guess about 6 inch wide by 10 inches tall for each number. Therefore all that needed to be done to change the unit number, was pull the box and slide the numbers out, put the new numbers in, then rehang it in the unit. If you look at early photos of GP9/GP18s you'll notice they are generally not centered side to side in the boards, since the boxes held four spaces, but those units were three digit numbers, they normally were offset to the right.

Not being a diesel or EMD historian, I assume that EMD decided to drop making the number boxes, probably due to manufacturing costs, as they were a fairly elaborate piece of work. So, the replacement was a back, reverse painted glass or plexiglass piece, that either sandwiched into the rubber gasket with the glass or went in alone if the material was thick enough. I'm not sure which of the N&W units that first used this design, but I'll take a wild guess and say the GP18s. I'm sure the GP30s were of this design.

At some point, probably about the mid 1970s, the railroad began going to a white plexiglass numberboard, with plastic numbers glued to it as a standard. There was no wholesale immediate change over from black to white, it was done over time as units were shopped, boards damaged or lost. I've got photos of units with a white board on one side and the black on the other. New units that were ordered came in with the white boards. I'd also hazard a guess that it was a visibility issue of the older, now very dirty boards compared to the brighter new ones.

There are a ton of other details on the various different numberboards used over time, types and designs on different units, but it is way too much to go into here. Hopefully, this will give you a basic understanding of the question and answer.

Best
Ken Miller

On Jan 21, 2014, at 9:41 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:


> Hello there, I've been going through my N&W picture books and I've noticed that some diesels sported black on white number boards and some had white on black.  Was there any real reason as to why some would have different boards?  Any knowledge on this would be appreciated.

> 

> -Evan Miller

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