Hey there everyone. I was wondering if someone could explain the colors of BN.
I have a couple locomotives (HO scale) from Walthers. One BN is green with black and the other is blue, white and black (called the blue sky scheme). Did the blue come before the green? Thanks! nittyp
nittyp,
The Big Sky Blue was used by the Great Northern from 1967 to the BN merger in 1970.
The engine you have in that scheme represents an ex-GN that has been re-number into BN but not yet repainted.
Mark Gosdin
The BN ‘Cascade Green’ paint scheme was the standard for most of the existance of the BN. The ‘Big Sky Blue’ paint scheme was used by the Great Northern railroad from 1967-1970(when the GN was merged into the BN). Until all of the engines were repainted BN ‘Cascade Green’, BN renumbered all of the units and placed small BN numbers on the units(usually below the cab) to aviod duplicate engine numbers(4 railroads made up the BN merger). I suspect you have one of the ‘patch’ units in the ‘Big Sky Blue’ paint scheme.
Jim Bernier
I think your right and I’ll even go as far as guessing it is a GP20. I picked up one of those by mistake thinking it was a GN unit just missing its letterboard. Darn!
Don’t worry too much about that "BN " number on your “patch” GP20. The numbers stayed the same in the series across the merger. GN 2000-2035 became BN 2000-2035 with only the addition of the subscripted “BN” under the existing number-especially in the Big Sky Blue scheme. The CB&Q GP20s got much different numbers in the merger: 2036-2064, I believe. So, you can have your GN GP 20 just fine with what you’ve got.
yes, indeed, its a GP20 Proto 2000 Locomotive from Walthers. Great looking locomotive. I just found it odd that it just had a very small “BN” under the locomotive #. Then, Walthers sells another model of the same GP20, but it has what looks to be temporary add on signs that are attached to the rearward hand rails. Interesting that they produced two different versions.
Thanks a lot for the clarification. Makes some sense to this newbie now!
nittyp
By the way, on those ex-GN GP20s, the long end is the front, not the short end. GN, like Southern and Norfolk and Western, preferred to operate their earlier diesels that way.
In a corporate image book there was a section on the Burlington Northern design. It mentioned that the final Great Northern Big Sky Blue image and the initial Burlington Northern image were designed by the same firm in the late 1960’s. I just wish I could remember the name of the design firm. I would have bought the book, but it was huge and the BN section was only a few pages.
Andrew