Model Railroading > Talking about CN's "ugly" 1950s green image

Hi guys,

After I dared to refer to CN's 1950s colours as ugly (heaven forbid!) here on TO, I decided to address this in more detail on my GMD-1 tour blog.

Here is the latest instalment:

http://www.rapidotrains.com/blog/

Thanks for looking,

Jason

I am over 50 and that green scheme was not around at all in my time. Please revise your blog to say those over 60. :)

I too like/prefer the noodle but I think you are a bit harsh on the 1950ies green scheme. Interesting perspective from an Art Historian nonetheless.

Rick

I never liked the green scheme either, and I'm not a Canadian.

I'll offer my views Jason on why I disagree with you, just as friendly debate. You're an art historian, I'm a historian who happens to collect (and deals a little bit in art). I'm looking at the Roger Broders poster (yes, its an original not a repro) in my living room, as I type this, for the Taurus Express and Simplon-Orient Express (London to Baghdad in 8 Days, must have been a hell of a trip back in the day too). A little background first. I grew up near Harrisburg, PA in the late 80s to 90s. Growing up we got a lot of colorful stuff through Enola over the years. Blinding Chessie units, miserable N&W units, lots of the rather boring Conrail units (they got better when the blue got brighter), CP and CN were common. Early CSX and other predecessor roads were there too. Occasionally we would get western visitors, ATSF managed to find the ugliest shades of both blue and yellow and thought combining them was a good idea. UP yellow was faded and usually boring. BN green, was cool because it was different. Then there was the Rio Grande. Best paint scheme of the 80s. It was an old logo (50 years or so by then) but it was bright with those orange safety stripes, man was that a great scheme. None of the other railroads really stylized their names, just block letters. Not the Rio Grande, they had speed lettering, it was different. Only Chesapeake and Ohio and Pere Marquette come to my mind as other railroads that did this, though I am sure there were others, block text was the gold standard. Then there was that bright orange on black. As for the Zebra stripes, in those days everybody had them, MKT, DRGW, BN, and CP to name a few. Rio Grande wore it better, at least when clean, but they didn't look bad looking like they had just been mid train on one hundred consecutive coal trains through the Moffat, but they looked better clean. The CP pacmans were cool, it was kinda like Conrail blue, I always wanted a brighter more vibrant shade of color in those two schemes. I got what I wanted in both eventually and they did indeed look better. Conrail is gone and CP has ruined it by losing the beaver. Then there was CN, the word I would use was busy, to busy, so busy it was boring. It was a vibrant scheme, but it was lacking in color and what color there was in the red, was always a faded orange. When they were new, on GPs and other units it could look pretty sharp, but for some reason I though the cab units wore it badly. The lazy noodle I felt was dated by the 70's and even more dated now...it just screams 60's to me. On the other hand the VIA logo of in a similar vein as the CN logo still seems cool today. Even the noodle GTW worked better for me. To me the black and white was a step back into a black and white world that was going color. It's not that black and white can't be striking (Apple), and in reality the coaches were not that bad, though they should have incorporated the red into that scheme, more than the noodle. (A passenger car should have been stainless steel and only been painted where there were smooth surfaces.) The zebra stripe is what over powers it for me. They improved this scheme a lot when they dropped that for just solid black with a white CN on the long hoods. Unfortunately then CN was just another railroad with a black locomotive, following the likes of NYC, PRR (I know they were green, but it was a really dark green that was almost black), Penn Central, and later NS. For me the 1960s-1970s was a time when railroads were "modernizing" their images. So many great schemes died to be replaced with such garbage. Boston and Maine, FEC, MoPac, C&O, N&W (going from bland to more bland), NYC, Milwaukee Road, thought this started in 1955, the list just goes on and on. The CN Green, if it isn't in fresh from the paint shop condition, it doesn't look that great, you're right. Where the black and white looks better until the red fades orange. But I still think of CN's color of choice as being orange, not red, because growing up, I saw what ever faded and tired units CN loaned to Conrail. My first exposure to the 1954 scheme was Monticello's FPA-4, which is kept in freshly painted condition and was a sight to behold the first time I saw it. But there is something else, and FPA-4 or an FP9 for that matter, looks old fashioned to me, and an old fashioned paint scheme suits them...to me. Black and white on an F unit looks fat, black and white on the FPA-4s makes them look like they're toy trains (ala Lionel) to me. If you had a CN M630 or whatever they were, well they would have only worn black and white, but that's not it, they look like they should wear black and white. It fits the industrial design better. Still, it wasn't as bad as the Milwaukee Orange and Red going to UP yellow. Like you, I like art, the art I like is advertising posters, and to me, anything after about 1955 is hideous. I'll add, there are a few instances when the CN black and white really is revolting to me, actually exactly six instances. Seeing Milwaukee Road Skytops in Black and White makes me want to throw up, then crawl in to a fetal position and cry. (I have a lot of issues when it comes to later Milwaukee Paint Schemes, my therapist and I are exploring treatment options). To me the sixty were a disaster in general for art, things didn't improve in the 70s, they got a little better in the 80s, and really started to come around again in the 90s through to today, but now it's all photography, no one uses the artistic license that painting can bring to ads anymore. But that's me, as they say to each their own. Happy Modeling.

Cheers,
Nick

I'll add that the Reading about this time took a similar Green and Yellow scheme and made it bold and beautiful, a true classic. Then they went and painted everything a bland shade of blue...oh well.

Nick, if you would have written that last post as a run-on sentence, I would have quit Train Orders. As it is, I think you must have the world TO record for a written post.

Rick

TOs gets a little squirrelly when your on large screen, that was written on 27" monitor and looked like it was about five lines...then I posted it and looked like that...today's life lesson, on a big monitor, paragraphs are important because the message is longer than it appears. I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw that myself. Also fighting insomnia for the last six hours, this probably does not aid my ability to write.

Cheers,
Nick



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/13 01:27 by NGotwalt.

Unreadable...

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

The wet noodle - orange - black - lite gray schemes ALL SUCK. They have all the charm of a toilet brush.

BTW, whoever researched the shade of green on that GMD1 SCREWED UP big time.

Bob

ATSF100WEST......Out

Bob,

Are you seriously judging the shade of a loco from a 1200 px photo on a computer screen?

The guys who actually ran the GMD-1 when it was green saw this thing in person and thought it was bang on. But who are they to know?

Regards from on board the Canadian,

Jason

ATSF100WEST Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The wet noodle - orange - black - lite gray
> schemes ALL SUCK. They have all the charm of a
> toilet brush.
>
> BTW, whoever researched the shade of green on that
> GMD1 SCREWED UP big time.
>
> Bob
>
> ATSF100WEST......Out

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