General Discussion

According to a post on another forum, IAIS is going to have one of the two ES44ACs on order painted into a Rock Island heritage paint scheme.  I guess it’ll either be a heritage paint like KCS "Belle" or NS’s Southern GP59 and executive F-units, or a revisionist what-if interpretation like UP’s Heritage SD70ACes. Somehow I doubt the paint scheme will be based on RI’s 1970s “Rock” blue.      

 The 1970's "Rock Blue" would be my choice for this RI Heritage Locomotive.

I like the early 50s scheme used on early Geeps and ALCo RS units.

I would personally prefer to see them painted in regular IAIS colors, which honor the University of Iowa and Iowa State University (neither of them are my alma mater).  The colors look sharp and IAIS keeps its power spotless.

cp456:

 The 1970's "Rock Blue" would be my choice for this RI Heritage Locomotive.

I'll second that motion - I love the ROCK blue scheme the best.  But I'd bet they'll go with the bright red & yellow with the speed-lettering.

Im going to bump this thread up i guess, Does anybody know what paint scheme the GEVO is going to be painted in, Thanks. Long live the Rock!

That would be GREAT !!!  One each perferably, ROCK style blue and 50's (Rocket style ?) red. In as close as possible to original designs as can be done on each ES44AC would look realy nice. 

The Maroon /yellow would be my preference,I remeber the Blue units and they were spiffy but if you want heritage  go with the maroon and yellow with the speed lettering...

 I look forward to seeing tho,whatever scheme it will be...

  Steam Scheme with the wings. But I doubt we will see that.

If there were a paint scheme for IAIS to use, I would prefer one from the more successful times of Rock Island's history. As I understand, it will be the red, black with the wings on the nose scheme. Please take a look at the link to below to see another paint scheme that would great in my opinion:

 

http://www.rits.org/www/modeling/whatif/whatif1.jpeg

Best wishes to all of you interested in the Rock Island!

CShaveRR:

The reports I've seen suggest that it will be painted in the black and red of early RI Geeps.

I agree with Carl.  The one that I've seen looks like similiar to what the early road diesels were delivered in.  It makes sense, the IAIS would have no problem maintaining a black and red scheme, that is fairly close to what they already have.

As to the blue/white colors, I liked them too.  To me, it looked better on the EMD engines than the GEs.  If you took a poll of most (especially die-hard) RI fans it would be the most hated scheme.  Mostly because it is from the end period.  There is a reason that scheme is called "bankruptcy blue."

Jeff 

 This was posted on the forum linked by the op:

 IAIS Chief Transportation Officer Mick Burkart was the featured speaker at the Rock Island Technical Society convention over the weekend and displayed a slide revealing the scheme that the IAIS chose for their RI heritage ES44AC, IAIS 513. It'll be in the RI delivery scheme of the early F-units: Black with red bands and white pinstripes, similar to that seen at http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=98583 , with silver trucks and fuel tank. The only IAIS markings will apparently be the reporting marks.

deepspire:

 This was posted on the forum linked by the op:

 IAIS Chief Transportation Officer Mick Burkart was the featured speaker at the Rock Island Technical Society convention over the weekend and displayed a slide revealing the scheme that the IAIS chose for their RI heritage ES44AC, IAIS 513. It'll be in the RI delivery scheme of the early F-units: Black with red bands and white pinstripes, similar to that seen at http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=98583 , with silver trucks and fuel tank. The only IAIS markings will apparently be the reporting marks.

Looking at the picture, if IAIS replaced the white trim and lettering with yellow, they wouldn't be that far from their existing colors.  I still think that IAIS should paint them in their own colors.

I'm not knowledgable of the myriad of paint schemes used by the CRI&P, which seemed to change daily, toward the end, but I did like the old "Route of the Rockets" paint on my Strombecker (1950?) all-wood E-unit model, with the paper overlay.  Never could get the axles into the wooden wheels without splitting them!  The RI blue never turned me on.  Same with the GN "Big Sky Blue", VIA, and the Conrail mono-chrome.  McGinnes Blue did look good on the B&M, methinks.  Darker blues (FEC, L&N) were better.