There were various options on the table to clean up the mess in Northeast in the early 70s. One of these was a combination of the Reading, Central of New Jersey, Lehigh Valley, and Erie Lackawanna - to be called the Mid-Atlantic Rail Corp. Although it’s likely that this railroad couldn’t have competed too heavily with Conrail (PC with the PRSL and Ann Arbor) in that state, these 4 railroads combined with the Delaware & Hudson and Boston & Maine (maybe later through in MEC, P&LE, DT&I, and a few other small roads), could have been a powerhouse in the intermodel market. If Maxwell, President of the EL had gotten his wish, MARC-EL could have gotten the ex-Big Four line to St. Louis, giving this new system plenty of outside connections.
SOOO, if this had happened, what do you think the paint scheme would look like? I’m thinking about modeling this fantasy road, and have a few ideas, but I like to see everyone elses ideas.
EL - gray and maroon
RDG - green and yellow
CNJ - green/red/blue and yellow/white/orange (too many paint schemes to count - but red and white was last)
LV - maroon and yellow/white
D&H - blue and gray/yellow
B&M - blue and white
There were too many colors to combine, but EL was certainly the biggest road of the group. Conrail had blue, so that’s out. I was going to go with green, but maybe red would look nice? Feel free to give your opinion or post some paintings. Here’s a great site for finding scale drawings to paint!
There’s a good chance that they would have done what Conrail did and used existing stencils and paint. Your railroad didn’t absorb PC, so black is out.
I’m thinking gray or green for you. The more boring the better, honestly. This would have been some sort of subsidised, no-nonsense railroad with no need for a flashy image. I would say go with maybe the EL gray or a CNJ green. I’d keep the logo very simple, probably the initials MARC in a very plain font. Be sure to leave several locos in their former road paint schemes but with the roadname painted out and MARC stenciled haphazardly in its place.
My Thoughts on this (and I have mentioned MARC-EL on other forums, although it eventually went no-where):
To Start: Rainbow colorations of all kinds - stencils for MARC-EL as mentioned before. We’re in the ConRail situation here, except Penn Central w/ it’s Black, PRR red and NYC green is not included in this batch (again, that was mentioned before).
Year 1-5: Simple EL-based (as dominate road) schemes take over as rolling stock is repainted Grey/Black. Perhaps a new name is adapted, as MARC-EL is rather clunkier than ConRail, and (alas) is also similar to the Marcal brand of towel and toilet paper. Government loans and bonding start to take effect in new rolling stock and motive power, and more importantly track improvements. Name? Nothing w/ Rail or Trak, please:
MidStates? Mid-Atlantic? - MidLantic (I like that one)?; North-Central - NorCent? Not sure…
Year 6 onward: Search for new image, as Reagan administration takes over, and like it will do with Conrail, eventually plans to privitize the MidLantic. I would think a brighter approach, maybe using EL light grey and yellow, but the yellow as dominant and the grey/black as trim only (sort of a Chessie knock-off).
Of course, maybe by this time the government packages ConRail and MidLantic together, they get brought up by the future NS & CSX, and history continues as we know it.
IC - black with the Death Star logo(I love their SD70s, yet I’m not a fan of NS black…)
Newest CP - red with white lettering (the beaver was cool, but the plain red looks nice too!)
IC&E - the yellow stripe really snazzes up the plain blue
Wisconsin & Southern (and Trona) - red and silver/gray look great together!
Alaska - their newest paint scheme is classy
BC Rail (all versions are cool, but the blue and silver look nice together)
Considering the 1970s, BN had just formed and was green, CP was red, Chessie was yellow, NW and SOU were black, CR was blue, UP and CNW had yellow - one could go on and on since there were still quite a few class ones in '76. About the only color missing though, was orange (yes, MILW had it, but they were struggling at the time - would another railroad want to pick up that image?) Bright orange would be hard to keep clean looking anyway. Maybe I’ll paint up some demo units…