MILW/Little Joe Experts: Came across an interesting picture of MILW E72 the other day. It was painted in the Orange/Black freight paint, but the black top extended down mid-level along the carbody. Typically you'd see the black top come down about a third of the way, just under the grills. I've never seen any other unit like this. Was this a prototype freight scheme before the other units were repainted? Here's a render illustrating the difference: -Mike
That was an experiment. After they started running with the GP9 units, and the O/B scheme was coming into use. Paint applied to the Joes did not line up in eyesight to the GP9 black. So they painted up at least two Joes to match the lines. But it didn't look good on the Joes and that was as far as it got. As I recall, it was E71 & 72. But there may be photo evidence of a third Joe.
Good info, thanks. Kind of narrows down the year range considerably if one were to model that scheme. I've seen lots of pics of E72 with the "normal" scheme so it must not have lasted very long? Would be neat to see a pic of two units lashed up with the experimental scheme. A slide on eBay of just E72 fetched around $180 recently so I just had to find out what this was about! -Mike
