I made a Milwaukee Road livery for the Vl80 Locomotive in the layout builder/ simulator Rolling Line. While i was making it i realized it would the VL80 would effectively be another generation of the road’s Boxcabs so i drew on them for influence in some of the particulars of the livery designs.
[layout for this and the below picture is Microcosmologist’s Strawgrass Cascades on the steam workshop, he also made a good Beer Line layout.]
[I also made a version with the Hiawatha Herald some later diesel units had on their short hoods. Layout for this picture is Ze Trackmeister’s Big Kansas Reloaded.]
[Here’s a VL80 with a Little Joe on Beausuveas’ Northeast Corridor Club Layout. An interesting coincidence is both locomotives are named after Soviet Leaders as the Vl designation is Vladimir Lenin’s initials. ]
My counterfactual/alternate history thinking of how the Milwaukee would eventually be able to use and then obtain Vl80k’s goes something like this: Around the late 50s to early 60s different management of the road, at that point in relative financial prosperity, reinvests in Modernizing the PCE Electrification systems to modern 25kv Ac in addition to closing the gap in the system between Avery and Othello. The modernized generating stations and 25kv system enables more power and performance to be obtained from the existing Boxcabs and Joes, eliminating one impetus for the removal of the catenaries that by the 70s would be comparatively young in contrast to the aging 1910s vintage system in reality. With the fuel savings from electrification, combined with better management than reality, and plain old luck, the Milwaukee Road scrapes by and barely survives the late 70s and early 80s. In place of Abandoning the PCE some lesser used Midwestern Branch lines and subs get the chopping block instead, allowing the company to benefit and earn from increasing pacific trade and Montanan Coal after the passage of the Clean Air Act as the Burlington Northern did. By the late 80s/early 90s the Milwaukee is slowly recovering from the hard times, but debts incurred from keeping afloat and some residual interest from loans made for the PCE modernization mean the Road is still poorer than the other Class I companies. The deterioration of the original boxcabs and Little Joes by then would mean that newer electric power would be needed, and a solution to the issue would be secondhand locomotives for cheap from the new railways of the post-soviet states. Vl80K units from RZhD’s Far Eastern Branches would be able to fill the gaps for powerful electric locomotives needed on the mountainous PCE. The initial units would be imported via Vladivostok to Seattle then being regauged, tested and then adapted for American Rails. Then after a couple years the railroad would maybe even order more or have an American adapted version produced domestically like what Amtrak did with the AEM-7.
(I know of course this is wildly speculative though and obviously even if it could’ve happened would be highly unlikely)
to close, here’s two extra screenshots of the VL80s pulling an Amtrak and an Intermodal consist, both on the Strawgrass Cascades layout.
if any of you have any thoughts on the livery or the scenario, feel free to reply to me.