When the new Santa Fes' rolled off the assembly lines back in the early to mid 90s they were a sight to behold with their war bonnet colors bright and shiny new. The first pic was taken at Union Station Joliet Ill in Sept of 94. Another photographer came up to me and told me if I had been in this same spot yesterday I would have seen 10 of these units all lashed up heading for their work destinations. Now advance forward to Sept of 2013 and just a few blocks from the same spot as the first pic was taken and look at the poor shape this loco is in. After looking at some roster pics online I see practically everyone looking the same as this one and some even worst. It makes me wonder how long we'll have these units with us to enjoy the old war bonnet colors. As sad as it is they're a part of todays modern railroading. With that in mind I decided to weather a few of mine to reflect this aspect. I went a little further and added some rust to mine which will probably be evident soon on many of the prototypes out there. I will probably be listing a few of these on e-bay soon for anyone who wants to have one for an up to date BNSF roster thomas
Nice job on the weathering! I'd like to know how you did the fade also. It's always 1995 on my layout, so all of my Santa Fe units are spiffy and clean....now my SP units, that's another matter . . . .
Well I'm glad you guys like these. The fade was easy once I got a good air brush. I bought two cheap airbrushes first to see if I could adapt to this airbrush weathering, but you really can't adapt to something like this if the darn thing isn't being consistent when using it. I finally decided to buy a Paasche Talon airbrush and everything is good now. I use just acrylics on my weathering that of course need to be watered down some to the right consistency. I can't remember off hand what color it is I use for this and I'm at work now and can't check but it's from the Badger line of paints. No special tricks for the fade and the hardest part or shall I say the most time consuming is masking off the all the windows. I also did a Southern Pacific the same way and the fade came out good on it also.
Red paint fades the worst. I do like the way you made that faded red. I've got some CB&Q units in Chinese Red that are in need of some of that.
Some warbonnets I caught on my road trip from Texas to L.A. last July. The GP60M in local service at Kingman AZ seems to have weathered fairly well apart from a bit of graffitti. The old Santa Fe had a bit of pride and would usually have repainted units long before they got to the state most warbonnets are in today. Sad, but I suppose that's what happens when the accountants call the shots in modern business.
This has been discussed before, but is worth reporting. GE used some horrible red and silver and bnsf orange in the 90s. It faded fast. The EMD paint still looks good on the GP60Ms and th SD75Ms.
When I was railfanning in Cajon Pass with a fellow Australian last year we thought an approaching train had a UP unit in the consist until we realised it was a badly faded BNSF unit.
Well, BNSF isn't much of a RR in my book anyway. the old SF kept their locos looking good. I use to railfan in Winslow, AZ and the old SF folks let me sit ona pedestrian overpass into the yard maintenance area to take pictures. As soon as BNSF took over I asked permission and was rudely told to get the hell off their property. When I walked along the right of way fence their people came and threatened me. Not a nice way to treat a railfan. You won't find any BNSF equipment on my Sante Fe line.
I've had a similar experience in the Chicago area years ago. Though I'm not sure any more whether that was already BNSF or still Santa Fe at the time. At any rate I wanted to visit for the Santa Fe engines. Meanwhile, however, I find that other places on UP and CP property have pretty much "caught up". I'm only a very occasional visitor due to my living in Switzerland. So maybe I've been a bit too pushy myself due to the lack of time.
Being an old SP modeller, I always referred to the 'bloody nose' paint as primer coat. Nice weathering on the SF units, just sad that you had to do it.
Nice looking start to weathering those engines. You should weather the grills more as they look kinda splotchy and incomplete to me. I would also go after hammering those fuel tanks with spills and rail dirt. The fade is looking very good and very pink.
Eh, I have no beef with the BNSF other than they behave like "Big New Santa Fe" rather than Burlington Northern Santa Fe. my modeling style is also similar except there will be BN and Pre BN but no BNSF, the farthest I may go equipment year built wise is probably 1994(my birth year). the BN units are started to look pretty trashed and disappear a lot whereas I find a ton of warbonnets. my beefs with "BNSF" aside: OP the models look Nice!
I think as the years go by BNSF is looking less like either of its predecessors and becoming its own railroad, I'm starting to like the swoosh logo scheme though that might be just because it's new and hasn't been let go to seed like the super fleet and earlier BNSF schemes yet. At least they are not Union Pacific, although by the time I reached southern California some Armour Yellow was a somewhat welcome relief after a couple of weeks of almost nothing but orange GE's. I did notice though, as I followed the old Santa Fe around Texas and west to California that a lot of the locomotive consists on locals that were made up of pre-merger paint schemes seemed to have Santa Fe painted units on the lead or at each end of the loco consist, maybe some old Santa Fe hands at the engine house still have a bit of a say in things.
yeah, the best they could muster for heritage are some hoppers. they said they'd focus on the future not the past, it's kinda of a bummer though that they're only associated with ATSF though.
