I was reading in an older trains magazine (citation available upon request) that UP plans on repainting and renumbering its heritage units when they go in for major overhauls.
Is this true? if so how long will they last? And wil they repain NS’s units too? or AMtraks?
Why would they bother custom painting if they were going to originally paint it back?
and did the biceps get repainted too?
Railroads are always painting their equipment. There is nothing that a paint shop likes to do more than to paint equipment.
Special promotional schemes are just that promotional. They will disappear when the locomotives are repainted. Why? The promotional schemes were applied by the manufacturer who did not care how he painted them. Each one was a custom job which brought more money to the builder.
Out on the line things are different. The have standard paints, standard stencils and standard ways of doing things. Will railroads do special paint jobs? You betcha, one line just did a wonderful job on a locomotive honoring veterans, the work was done (IIRC) by veterans on their own time. (?) .
So much of the finish work is applying decals rather than painting, and they are not going to make one time decals for that whole fleet of locomotives. Enjoy them while they are here, next time in the shop bey will come out looking very standard.
ROAR
I believe at the outset UP said the Heritage units wouldn’t carry those paint schemes forever. Sooner or later useage and mileage would take its toll and the units would have to be repainted anyway, and in all likelyhood to the standard UP colors. So, enjoy 'em while they’re out there. No surprise here.
They would not be ‘special’ if they remained forever. You decorate your house for Christmas and only leave it that way for the season, then you take it all down. If you left it up and on, day in and day out, all year long it would no longer be a special decoration, commorating the season (you’d just be the wierdo down the street who pays a lot for his monthly electric bill).
For the Union Pacific, it is hard to tell which special paint scheme is going to be the first to be removed.
Some people have posted that the Union Pacific Heritage Units would have been better if they were in the literal schemes used by the predecessor railroads on diesel.
Andrew
Back in 2001 Uncle Pete painted and numbered two SD70M’s to commemorate the winter Olympics. They are still carrying those numbers and paint. So long as the paint holds up they won’t be in a rush to change anything.
In the case of the NS, the GEs were painted by NS and the EMDs were done by EMD.
And it is entirely possible the the chief reason the units were painted in heritage schemes was to protect those service marks. UP has no need to continue use of the units as long as their legal protection is in effect. When it comes time to “re-mark their territory” you may well see the heritage units V2.
I believe that. I was looking forward to seeing an SD70ACe in bloody nose, or CNW’s lighting stripe scheme. Disappointing UP, disappointing.
If they wanted “Heritage Units” then a lot of them should have been Steam Locomotives. [tup]
When they dake delivery of new motive power there has to be research done to recreate the early graphic schemes for a new round of Heritage units.
Andrew
Polyurethane paint holds up for a LOOONG time…thankfully.
I’d bet some of NS’s heritage units wind up going 15+ years before a repaint.
“And it is entirely possible the the chief reason the units were painted in heritage schemes was to protect those service marks. UP has no need to continue use of the units as long as their legal protection is in effect. When it comes time to “re-mark their territory” you may well see the heritage units V2.”
BINGO!
And you see that in the remakes of classic oldies, being sung by the “original” crew in a new mixing. That gets to extend the copyright.
ROAR
In the direction that Larry is pointing. Remember back when the UP announced they were going to field some"Heritage’ Painted ( Decorated Units? It seemed everyone was blown away that UPRR was going to put forth such an expensive, and high profile project. During that time there was a bit of a ‘Dust up’ within the Hobby Community…UP was demanding payment for use of its copyrights on Fallen Flags that it had folded into it’s Corporate heritage ? You betcha there weas some of that Copy Write Protection in the UP’s Heritage Fleet. It sure got them good publicity back in the Rail Fan and Hobbyist Community.
As was mentioned UP is still running their pair of Olympic units, and those were not the first Commemorative Paint jobs either. There was , I believe and SD 24 (?) that was decorated in a Desert Camoflage scheme to honor the UP employees who went to fight Desert Storm. So Commemorative Decorated Units on the UP were not totally unknown…what was a shock was the skill and care (not to mention “The Bucks” they put into their Heritage Unit fleet. Pretty well blew the Rail Fan Ciommunity back on its heels. A first class operation with a first class Heritage Fleen.
And then along comes the Norfolk Southern, under the leadership of an admitted Rail Fan, Mr. Wick Moorman. They took the Term ’ Heritage Fleet" to a whole new level, an
Remember - every thing that was once new - over time becomes old. When it is old, the attraction of it ‘newness’ no longer exists.
As pointed out by D.Carlton and samfp1943, UP’s Olympic painted units are on the prowl still, as this Loma Linda area (CA) impossibly composed grab shot from August 17, 2012 shows.
As far as renumbering the six UP Heritage units, there is a problem that no one has mentioned here! As I recall, some were painted with original number slots reserved, some were not. Thus, the latter have no slots to renumber the units to!