Western Railroad Discussion > New Iowa Interstate Heritage unit

According to the Iowa Interstate Yahoo group, one of IAIS' new ES44AC units on order will be painted in a heritage scheme:

"The IAIS has three more new ES44AC arriving in late December 2014.
One of them will be a heritage unit.
The colors will be yellow ends, with IAIS red on the sides . Iowa Interstate spelled down the sides in yellow, out lined in
black."

This should be interesting.

Those sound like normal IAIS units to me.

upheritage6 Wrote:
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> Those sound like normal IAIS units to me.

The standard paint scheme for IAIS is black with red stripe on the sides and yellow nose/tail. From the above description, it looks like this new heritage unit will be ALL red on the sides with yellow nose like the second-to-last scheme the Rock Island used. Is a light blue "THE ROCK" scheme soon to follow?

As both a former RI and IAIS employee...
I hope to !!!! NOT>
zr190

This would not be a heritage unit in the sense that IAIS 513 is...it will be fully lettered for Iowa Interstate, no "Rock Island" on it anywhere. It will, however, use a styling scheme similar to the red/yellow with speed lettering the RI used from 1969-75.

I think "tribute scheme" might be the best way to describe it.

All this is presuming, of course, that the person who posted this info is correct. 2014 is also the 30th Anniversary of the IAIS and a special anniversary scheme is also a possibility.

NZ



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/14 09:15 by NebraskaZephyr.

BNSF6400 Wrote:
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> upheritage6 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Those sound like normal IAIS units to me.
>
> The standard paint scheme for IAIS is black with
> red stripe on the sides and yellow nose/tail.
> From the above description, it looks like this new
> heritage unit will be ALL red on the sides with
> yellow nose like the second-to-last scheme the
> Rock Island used. Is a light blue "THE ROCK"
> scheme soon to follow?

Many fans of the blue and white scheme would love to see it come back, but it's highly unlikely that will happen for several reasons. This scheme is inexorably tied to the death of the Rock. It represents the saddest part of the railroad's history, the last few miserable years as it slowly died. It's unlikely any group wishing to pay tribute to the railroad is going to choose a paint scheme nicknamed 'bankruptcy blue' that recalls that era. You also have to factor in that the scheme didn't weather very well at all. The light blue faded extremely fast, and the white ends were impossible to keep clean. Had the Rock Island survived much longer, it's highly likely there would have been yet another color change.

Posted from iPhone

Dylan VanAntwerp
Jesup, IA