The Anthracite herald used on the hopper car fleet was very visible . I would like to know when it was first used and if it would be correct for a transition (steam to diesel) layout.

Bill

Off hand, I do not recall the year it first appeared, but you are safe to use it for the transition years and a bit beyond. The herald survived long enough to be seen on hoppers with speed lettering after the speed lettering had replace the RR Roman lettering. Strange that it was done at all as Anthracite coal had long since been surpassed by cross line traffic as the road's major haulage. Gas and heating oil were rapidly replacing coal for both residential and commercial heating.

the rolling stock reference has a picture of a composite hopper build during WW2 with the herald on it. So it would be easy enough to compare that time period to the period you want to model

In 1962, Reading acquired 400 class HTz hoppers for use at Cornwall and Joanna. These hoppers did not have the anthracite herald. Neither did the HTx cars rebuilt from earlier offset-side cars in 1959. I have seen photos of the HTl and HTn cars with the Anthracite Herald. Iirc they were built in the late 20's or early 30's.

To go along with this, Somewhere in those archives of Reading materials hopefully in the library and not migrated to someone's private collection is a pack of "blueprints" with proposed variations of the "Antracite" herald or logo. One of which touted instead of the "worlds largest anthracite hauler" had the crusader logo in the diamond area and around said diamond, stated "The Route of the Crusader." There were other slogans also, but that is the one that stuck with me. I saw this at the first "reorganization" meeting held at Craig Bossler's corner apartment across from the Engineering building - my guess would be, back in 1977 or 78. So the memory is excused.

Thus my best guess at a start date for the logo would be during the popularity of the Crusader, definitely pre SPEED lettering.

But wait there's more.
Back on cold New Years Eve, I believe 1981 (but may have been 1983) Back when I thought we needed to look for every Reading freight car and document the Conrail to Reading transition numbering, I was walking a line of gondolas sitting on a siding in Pottstown looking for Readings and jotting down numbers. It was nearly dark and I get to the end of that line and inside the fence at the former Steel plant there I see a string of whitelined HTw hoppers, and before my very eyes....... two Anthracite heralds staring back at me. Well Holy Shitsky Batman. I was impressed as I had been seriously railfanning/researching the Reading for about 5 or 6 years and never dreamt that I would see or take that picture.

Turned out the cars were being rebuilt and shipped out of the country by a rebuilder using the steel mill as a base of operation. I believe that was Eastern Car Builders, or something to that effect.

I'll post those photos as soon as the memory and the pictures end up at the same place and same time. SO you have a pretty broad range of being able to use that paint scheme on your layout.

Oh and all those long walks through yards and along sidings. several years later we got a book/printout with every Reading car number and its relative Conrail number from a insider at Conrail.

OK so it was 1982

Rob