NYC/P&LE GP-7 5684

[Daniel1975]

 Hi All

Atlas is offering this GP-7 in HO Scale in a special paint scheme  

I was trying to find out when this was applied to this engine and why? Seems there is no answer on the Net - does anyone here know an answer to my questions? 

Thanks in advance!

Daniel

[wjstix]

I don't think this is a "one off" engine that got a special paint scheme, I think this was just the standard P&LE scheme at one time, perhaps going back to when the GP's were first purchased?? I know later they used the standard NYC paint scheme of the time.

I was able to find a drawing in a website about RR paint schemes:

http://usloki.tripod.com/images/gp7/gp7ple2.gif

[Daniel1975]

 I'm not sure of course but there is only pictures of the 5684 to be found in that paint scheme - none of the other GP7 are painted like that. But then it's really hard finding out stuff like that... 

[CincySouthernRwy]

According to what I remember reading in "Pittsburgh & Lake Erie R.R." by Harold McLean, Golden West Books; 2nd edition (1980), this was a one-off or experimental paint scheme.  I've seen the lower color referred to as blue-gray and green-gray.  The Atlas photo appears to be straight gray.  I think this was done by EMD prior to delivery, but I don't recall.

No idea why they did it, although in the 1960's, NYC painted a couple of EMD cab units in experimental schemes: solid black, solid gray, and solid "jade" green.  Of course, black won, not that the gray was all that imaginative, either.  Subsidiary Indiana Harbor Belt gave us an idea what a fleet of solid jade green diesels would look like by painting a few NW2's in that color.  Perhaps this was a related experiment to P&LE 5684?

Adam

[wjstix]

There's a color picture of 5684 on page 33 of Solomon & Schaffer's "New York Central" book from MBI (at least in the first edition, later editions used some other pictures and moved some others around) so the paint scheme is fairly correct...at least going by the pics, the model's light gray looks more like light green on the prototype, but not as bright as the later NYC "empire" jade green.

[FlyingCrow]

???  I dunno.   I model the P&LE.  I have pix of 5684.   Lightning stripe with "New York Central System" above the strive.   Loco number over "P&LE" on the side of the cab.

 

[wjstix]

FlyingCrow

???  I dunno.   I model the P&LE.  I have pix of 5684.   Lightning stripe with "New York Central System" above the strive.   Loco number over "P&LE" on the side of the cab.

 

Could be, the pic I referred to was (IIRC) taken in 1964. Could be 5684 was delivered in the lightning stripe scheme c.1950 and was painted into this new scheme in the early sixties. My impression this was something the P&LE did; it wasn't meant to be an experiment for a new NYC System paint scheme, kind of like their green ALCO switchers recently modelled by Bachmann.