From the time Frisco got its Baldwin switchers until it took delivery of its last GP40-2, the railroad had three different paint schemes on its diesel freight units (five, if you count purchases of two Oklahoma lines)- blue & white, black with yellow lettering & striping, and mandarin orange & white. Granted, on the F-units and GP7s there have been variations of the black/yellow scheme, but I much prefer the full "cat-whisker" striping on the GP7s and Alco hood units, and the full yellow striping on the Fs and FA/FBs. The O/W just didn't look good on the Fs, IMO, and I'm grateful the FAs, RS1s and all but one RS2 never got this scheme. Of all the variations, which color scheme was your favorite on the Frisco? And remember, we're talking freight engines here.
F units I gotta go black with yellow stripes (broad strip along the bottom, stripe thru portholes) Didn't care for mandarin / white on those at all. My favorite however is orange/white on GPs and SDs!! -Mike
I kind of like the madarin/white job. That took a lot of guts to place on something as large as a locomotive. (and a misguided belief that it would remain relatively clean for any amount of time )
You mean like the red & white on the Soo engines? Yeah, they looked bad when dirty.......maybe that's why I perferred black & yellow myself. At least the black hides grime well, and there aren't so many shades like there were of Cascade Green (last count, I counted five different shades of green on BN locomotives.) And white is a well-known filth magnet (see: KCS) From what I understand, EMD had GP35 and DD35 demonstrators out & about in Mandarin orange & white, and apparently Frisco liked the color so much they adopted it. [ January 27, 2006, 10:42 AM: Message edited by: friscobob ]
As for passenger schemes, only two even look good to me- the scheme shared with Katy for the Texas Special, and the so-called "Racehorse" scheme. O/W definitely did NOT look good on an E-unit
Didn't the Meteor also have two E7s painted in this scheme. Didn't last long because the Frisco E7s were all painted in the Race Horse scheme after a few years.
All the E7s came out painted in this scheme (for both Meteor & Texas Special), complete with corrugated stainless side panels. The E8s all came out in the racehorse scheme, with the E7s being rebuilt (new side air grilles, stainless panels removed) and repainted to match later.
YES!! Here's a pretty nice pic from '63 giving us an early glimpse of a very cool scheme ""coming to a favorite railroad near you..." These had silver trucks tho: http://sd45.com/emd/pages/emdgp35a.htm [ January 27, 2006, 06:14 PM: Message edited by: SLSF Freak ]
That's the one!! Thanks for sharing the link! First time I saw a pic of this demo set was in the book "Rails, Rivalry & Romance" by Donald Banwart, which was about the railroads in Ft. Scott, KS from the late 1800s up to 1980, with primary focus on the Frisco (Ft. Scott was primarily a Frisco town, with an MP branch and the MKT line from Parsons to St. Louis going thru as well).
I have to say, I like the Mandarin Orange and White on hood units, though I like the occasional black and yellow unit as well. One thing the Mandarin Orange and White looked strange on was Business cars 1 and 2. Why anyone would go from a classy Pullman Green scheme to that I have no idea.... Paul
Yes, they were pretty garish. I remember seeing the biz cars in the Pullman green colors, and they looked classy. You also have to remembr that some of the E-units were also repainted into the O&W scheme This scheme belonged only on the hood diesels and maybe the cabooses.
I grew-up in Springfield, about 3 blocks from the diesel house. My favorite would be those switch-engines running parallel to Commercial Street, and under the old footbridge. The black/yellow was okay. O/w yuck. Jerry Geisert
If Frisco had not cut back so much on the yellow stripes, I could even handle the scheme on the road engines. Imagine a quartet of GP40-2s in full-blown "cat whisker" black & yellow on the point of train 33, racing over the Ozarks.........or even SD45s.........
Favorite SLSF diesel paint scheme by far is the red/gold/white applied to the Frisco E7's/E8's, followed by the later red/deluxe scheme which I liked almost as well - most of the Frisco E's I saw and rode behind wore the red/deluxe scheme. But, since you asked about Frisco diesel freight schemes - the early black & yellow F3's, F7's and FP7's were my favorite. The ALCo FA's in the same scheme looked pretty good as well, though I favored the slightly pointed top on the cigar band below the headlight that was on the EMD's a bit better. Ken
