They bought some used cars

Railbox's official scheme was always yellow with the "Next Load Any Road" X logo, but they did buy up some former New Hope and Ivyland, Pickens and St Lawrence cars which were patched into RBOX lettering.  The Pickens and NSL cars would have been turquiose.  These are probably what you're thinking of.

I have to admit that I didn't know that till a week ago when Chris vanderHeide from the WRMRC (Sudbury Division) told be about it and sent me a photo of an ex-NHIR car to illustrate the point; thanks Chris.

Thanks!

Jurgen -

Many Thanks! That is great information. Might you be able to either pass on the photo or post it? I'd love to see what it looked like!   BTW - my elementary school was right next to a Chessie/GT interchange which is where I saw the boxcars.

I guess that means that I still have a number of my marbles!   

Thanks Again!

See first

See first link:

http://trainweb.org/nwrp/rbox/rbox1501data.htm

http://trainweb.org/nwrp/rbox/rbox1523data.htm

http://trainweb.org/nwrp/rbox/rbox2130data.htm

These would be quite rare. Fairly small series, definately a tiny minority compared to the full RBOX fleet. Plus they mostly got repainted. The photo above is the only one I have ever seen of an RBOX in a "patch job" paint scheme.

Here's a full list of Railbox's secondhand cars:

RBOX 1000-1049 blt FMC, ex-NHIR 851-900 (Railbox Class XFF99)
RBOX 1500-1547 blt Evans, ex-NHIR 701-750 (Railbox Class XEF88)
RBOX 2000-2153 blt Golden Tye, ex-NSL (Railbox Class XGF88)
RBOX 2500-2505 blt Golden Tye, ex-PICK (Railbox Class XGF99)
 

NHIR's scheme was green, as seen above in the first link.

NSL and PICK were National Railway Utililization cars, and the original paint schemes were a light sky blue.

Here's a former NSL car now owned by another railroad:

http://freight.railfan.ca/els/els763.jpg

That said, are you sure the

That said, are you sure the cars you saw back then were RailBoxes? A lot of big and small railroads had boxcars, and in the late 1970s (and since then as the cars soldiered on in secondary ownership) most of those shortline and lease cars were very colourfull and bright. As opposed to today when most lease boxcars are plain brown.

I would sear I was.... (have been wrong before!)

Chris -

I think they may have been. Of course, the personal perspective (call it bias, polluted memories, etc..) comes in to play as well - I'm working off of memories that are 35 or so years old. Like I said - I believe that the the cars were turquoise (light blue in color - with yellow doors). And yes, I could swear that they were Railbox. Its just one of those things - I could swear that I saw something, and have been looking for it as a nice addition (variation) to the three Railbox that I currently have.

I would have seen these at the Chessie/GT interchange that was next to the school I attended. This was the (Michigan) Chessie main line that went to the Wyoming yard. Also, the interchange was in very close proximity of a local auto plant which generated a large amount of traffic back in the day.