One of the more photographed landmarks along the former Reading East Penn Branch is this brick structure built by the Fleetwood Metal Body Company in 1917. Fleetwood built high-quality automobile bodies, and mounted them on chassis of the top auto manufacturers of the day, including Packard, Pierce-Arrow, and Cadillac. One of the lesser known manufacturers using Fleetwood bodies is American Locomotive Company, who built a line of luxury automobiles in its Providence, Rhode Island plant. People who bought luxury automobiles with Fleetwood bodies include, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, Andrew Carnegie, Silent film star Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, and Enrico Caruso. In 1925, General Motors’ Fisher Body Corp. acquired Fleetwood, and immediately expanded the plant. By 1930, Fisher moved all operations to Detroit, and shut down the Pennsylvania plant. Although they were offered jobs in Detroit, almost all of Fleetwood’s 375 employees chose not to relocate, leaving themselves unemployed. Bitter feelings followed, an no GM cars were sold to Fleetwood residents for quite a few years. With faded lettering still showing on the factory over six decades after its closure, CP/D&H train 556 with SD40-2’s from CP, NS, and CXX rolls through Fleetwood.
Not
just heritage schemes, not just commemorative schemes - this album is devoted to some of the world's most interesting paint schemes, past or present.
