I just got in from diggin' up about nine feet of irrigation line to find the place where a pocket gopher chewed a couple holes in the pipe (saves me the $100/hr for the irrigation contractor to find it), so I'm probably a little mind-fatigued as well as sore in every muscle below the waist. Unfortunately I trapped the little SOB after he did the damage last fall.
I was thinking of this while digging. There are/were paint schemes on railroads that, to me, looked great on certain types of locomotives, but not on others. Same colors, same basic arrangements, but for whatever reason, they only looked right on certain locomotives.
For example:
CNW F-units: Even though I'm a CNWHS member, the CNW yellow & green never did much for me, but on their F7s and F3s, especially the later scheme with just the ball & hashmark logo, the livery looks much better. I've seen plenty of CNW locomotive power over the years, but those F units look the best in that pattern while everything else was pretty boring.
ICG GP30s: The orange & grey scheme used by the ICG never appealed to me at all, except on their GP30s. I liked it so much I custom-painted one in that scheme for my N scale layout, where it looks very striking parked in my yard right now.
CGW Deramus-Era F-units: The later, Deramus-era red never looked right to me on their SD40s, GP7s and GP30s, but on their covered-wagons it looked perfect. Admittedly, F's and E's are my favorite engines of all time, but not every paint scheme looked right on them to me, but the basic red or maroon with the "Lucky Strike" logo - very nice.
BN High-Nose GPs/SDs: The BN green & white was pretty bland to me and I saw an awful lot of that living in Minnesota and Iowa. However, put the white safety stripes on the ends of their high-nose hood units and they look real good to me. I still stop and snap a picture whenever I can still see one in the yards up here (most often parked on a storage track or dead line).
BNSF Pumpkin SD9s: I can't stand the BNSF pumpkin scheme on any of their units except the few high-nose SD9s (maybe some are SD7s) they have left on the roster. I saw such a unit looking very spiffy in that pattern westbound out of Wilmar (it was third in the consist) and I snapped 3 photos just of that engine (almost bought an SD9 for my layout to custom paint like that).
Anyone else with such specific likes/dislikes?
Isn't it neat what you can think when your mind isn't occupied with work...refreshing isn't it!!
A note to reinforce your premise: color schemes were proffered by the locomotive manufacturer's design department, mainly EMD and ALCO-GE during the first generation. Plus, for the most part, the schemes were being applied to F's and E's and PA's and FA's. Thus you'll find the reason most schemes work better with one locomtovie design than the others. But, if memory serves, they all still looked pretty good no matter who the manufacturer.was.
But take the RDG yellow and green applied to the GP and SD fleet (the GP38 with the roof cowl back from the cab in black was fantastaic) ...I don't think that would look as good on the F's by any means. Yet when the El began applying the DL&W gray and maroon with yellow pinstripes to everything, it turned out pretty good (but I should have known that because the DL applied that scheme to the TM's!). NYC's two tone gray with red herald fit everything nicely as did a Tuscan red with yellow pinstripes on anything with a PRR ownership reciept. LIRR had a dull gray and white, sometimes with orange letters which sleepy morning commuters and work dulled evening commuters put up with but railfans did not salute. .
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One thing that helped with EL was that the old DL&W color arrangement was modified to fit the more angular lines of hoods instead of "one-stencil-fits-all". Going in the other direction, the ATSF yellow bonnet looked absolutely wretched on switchers, they should have gone back to zebra stripes.
That's a good point. In full disclosure, EL is my favorite fallen flag with CGW being very close second (I saw EL in operation whereas I never saw a CGW train, so that ranking won't change), but with that said, I never saw a locomotive-type that looked bad to me in the EL livery. The paint scheme seemed to fit perfectly on all makes, and even some of the "fantasy" artwork I've seen with EL colors on modern power looks good (I saw a C44-9W done-up for the EL and it worked real well).
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