Burlington Northern Paint Scheme (Green-Black with White Lettering)

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

Hi, this has been nagging for a while can someone please let me know the year the BN green & black colour scheme?

Thanks folks.

pick.

2

The original BN diesel paint scheme officially arrived on March 2, 1970. On page 60 of the 1971 BN Annual, there’s a picture dated (hopefully correctly) the next day showing two green and black BN units headed west. The lead unit is BN 2072, a brand new GP38 and the next is another new GP38. It appears to me that they’re headed west to their assignments in the northwest. Of course, painting all the locomotives that were inherited from the previous railroads took several years–about 5. The original paint scheme lasted as an exclusive until the GP50’s were delivered in 1985, and there were other paint schemes after that.

Ed

3

It started when BN started in 1970; however some equipment was being painted much earlier. Some GN passenger cars were painted in Cascade green and white as early as 1968. The color was picked because it was different than the colors used by the GN, NP, CB&Q and SP&S.

4

Thanks folks, living the wrong side of the pond don’t help, 1970 is near enough for me. There’s always modellers like you about to come up with the goods.

Be in touch.

pick. Oh ye, Happy New Year

5

As mentioned the BN Green was debuted in March of 1970. The First units delivered in BN Green were the SP&S ordered GP-38’s

The last unit repainted from the pre merger roads was BN RS-3 4064(SP&S 79) on 24 August 1977 at Hillyard(Spokane).

GN and CB&Q both had units on order at the time of the merger and those units followed the GP-38’s

6

In addition to different color combinations from all of the merger railroads, I “heard” the black represented BN’s big shipment commodity of coal and green represented BN’s big shipment commodities of agricultural and forest products. No?

7

No - at least I’ve never heard that before. Although GN and NP did haul coal in the 1960s and before, the big Powder River Basin unit trains were still a ways in the future. If they went by what they hauled then, probably would have been dark red rather than black, in honor of all the iron ore GN and NP hauled.

Plus the first president of BN had been president of CB&Q, so would have been unlikely to go for a paint scheme based on NP/GN traffic.