Western Railroad Discussion > Fading Paint on BNSF Engines

Is it just me or does the BNSF Orange on the engines seem to fade more quickly than anything else, or any other color?
The new engines look nice at first but it does not take long for them to look faded.

Orange, Red, and Yellow are more photoreactive than other colors. That's why you see pink and grey bonnets and peach and cantaloupe colored Dash 9s.
Even green fades but not nearly as noticeably.


TCS - oh, time to get to the frame shop

From what I overheard the other day, they started using stronger soap again.

paints today may not have sealer available, that used to be used, I havee read here on this forumn, and some painting done by subcontractors for GE was subprime, they skimped to make more$$.

It wasn't that they skimped it was a matter of they were putting out engines so fast they had to subcontract the paint on some to keep up, those are the ones that are fading. Here's quote from a guy at GE.


"Back during our last record year about 1999, the paint shop in Erie couldn't keep up with the number of locomotives that had to go through it so they decided to outsource the painting. The guys in Bldg.26 test call the BN's pumpkins (because of the orange paint) well the company we outsourced the painting to decided to cheap out on the paint. Once the units got out on the road the orange paint started to fade (maybe you saw some of them) so we had to bring them back to Erie and repaint the orange. The guys called them peaches when they came back because the orange had faded so much."

Dave Toussaint
Riverside, CA
SoCalRailFan.com

SoCalRailFan Wrote:

> Once the units got out on the road the orange
> paint started to fade (maybe you saw some of them)
> so we had to bring them back to Erie and repaint
> the orange. The guys called them peaches when they
> came back because the orange had faded so much."

These were mostly 4400's and 4500's. GE also had a problem with "defective paint" on the first few units of the original, H1-painted Dash 9 order, to the point that BNSF wouldn't even accept them at delivery. Must have scared GE straight for a while, as the orange paint on those H1's (960-1123) has held up remarkably well.

Even the new engines lose their gloss after a few months Orange is a nasty color on a Loco . About the best seem to be the 700 series warbonnets and even some of the Original paint GP60m's are still ok Others didn't do as well .

For a really long lasting paint job check out anything SP that was on the EMD maintainance contract and painted at the Burnham shops around 1994 . Several SD40R's and Tunnel motors are still out there looking like new .

Andy g

gp60m122 Wrote:

> Even the new engines lose their gloss after a few
> months Orange is a nasty color on a Loco . About
> the best seem to be the 700 series warbonnets and
> even some of the Original paint GP60m's are still
> ok Others didn't do as well .

I'm pretty sure none of the red and silver GP60M's still have their original 1990-vintage paint. They fell victim to another paint problem. DuPont Imron is (or was) apparently very touchy when it comes primer and other conditions at the time it's applied. When it dries, it forms a plastic-like sheet, but if that sheet doesn't adhere well to the surface below, as soon as the paint gets marred, it starts coming off in large flakes. That's what happened to the 60M's - long about 1992-3, much of the fleet began shedding large flakes of silver from their fuel tanks. The paint cancer soon spread to the nose and cab sides, revealing rust-colored primer underneath. From what I read at the time, EMD wound up paying for warranty repaints on the whole fleet.

The 5300s are fading also, peachy.

...

Just saw the 4433 today, one of the worst I've seen.
Colin Johnson

The peach colored engines (on Dash 9s) seem to be as stated, confined to the 4400-4500 and early 5300s (5399-5370). I guess I had it wrong, the rumor I heard was that it was some kind of environmentally friendly test paint. But the story above sounds more plausable. I've seen a few Macs that are starting to fade as well.