BNSF Diesel Locomotive Colors

Alex your best bet will be to check Lionel's display at York if you are headed that way.  Hopefully they will have some type of BNSF engine with current mfg. paint being used on display even if not the SD70MAC  you are looking for.

Jack 

And not one of the examples shown are "fresh from the paint shop."

So, the question is: 

What is the correct shade of BNSF orange?

The answer is:

The color the prototype locomotive is wearing at the time.

There's been several threads covering the "correct" color of XYZ railroad over the years and the answer is always the same.

Lighting, weather, age, the camera  and even one's own eyesight all have an effect on color.  Also, orange, like red will be more susceptible to fading with age and cleaning chemicals.

Plus, the perception of color on a model inside is even more open to interpretation depending on the artificial lighting used.

Even if Lionel were to get a couple of gallons of orange paint from the BNSF, it would look "wrong" under certain lighting conditions.

Rusty

Alex,

As you know we live kind of in the heart of the BNSF. When I called on them as a customer, I know that they had a real problem with the orange they used fading rather fast. It only took about a month of two out in the summer sun to have that orange fade to a very dull color of orange. But, I do not know if they ever used more that one color of orange. Just an FYI for you.

According to my BNSF book, 9858 & 9860 came from the same batch at the same time, Dec. 1997. I would surely think that the paint would have been the same at the time they were made?  In your first picture, 8982 was made in Apr. 2000.

I think what Roger Wasson says above (paint fading) is what we are seeing in these pictures. I think he has it. My BNSF Locomotive Directory book shows the same fading on lots of the pictures they included. Many are also the darker orange color. The lighter ones actually look faded in some of the books pictures.

I am also thinking about getting one of these new Lionel engines and I like the darker color as well. I know very little about being prototypical and I'm with you on that too (don't care), I get the ones I like. Surely they wouldn't give us a brand new faded one?

After looking at the book some more, the old green BN's and Red & silver SF's as well as some of their other colors show similar fading in the pictures.

Frank great photo....looks like that one came fresh from the paint shop. We do the calendars for the BNSF and they always send us a loco fresh from the paint shop.

I just hope the fuel tank profile will be lowered as the catalog states.

You guys are making me want both road numbers now...stop that!  Was just wanting one until this thread.  My wallet really needs to concentrate on track, switches and layout building, you are confusing it

There's only 1 orange. Now depending on which paint scheme it is, it's either green or black to go with that orange.

Is the current other color black and the older one green? Hoping black is the one they have settled on. I like the black much better and is mostly what I see around here (west side of Kansas City area).

Roger and the rest of you guys are correct - fading in the sun. I looked at quite a few more pictures of various engines taken a few years apart, and some have faded noticeably while others appeared to have remained closer to their original color.

Hopefully, Lionel will not try to imitate real life, and will not use paint that fades .

Jack, I definitely will not be going to York in April, and although October still is a possibility, that would be too late to order the locos. Maybe someone who is going to York in April could examine the BNSF orange colors, and report back?

THX!

Alex

I'm sure that somebody will complain if it doesn't fade prototypically. 

Well, here's the colors that Lionel painted on the American Flyer SD70ACe:

Rusty

I think black is only used on the H3 scheme (the swoosh logo). The H1, and H2 which the above pictured are, uses green. 

Bill

Along those lines, I recall some of the Dash 9-44CWs delivered in the late 90s faded very quickly and very badly to basically yellow. From a distance these could look like a UP engine in the consist. I recall railfan talk that GE even agreed to repaint units from one order in which the finish degraded so quickly, though I don't know if that's true. We are talking really bad fading. Even with paint jobs that hold up better, its very common to see the kinds of shading variations on the same BNSF model locomotive models. Perhaps because of that, I have yet to see a model from MTH or Lionel that didn't plausibly represent BNSF orange.

BNSF settled on orange and black as its colors in 2006 when it changed its name from "Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway" to just "BNSF Railway" (maybe the corporate motto is "We don't stand for anything...). As mentioned above that's the "Heritage III" scheme with the "swoosh" style logo. I think all the SD70ACes were delivered in that paint, and all ES44s were delivered that way after about 2006. I think pretty much everything on the roster now is repainted in that scheme when the time comes.

"Heritage II" is the orange and green scheme with the Santa-Fe cigar band logo across the nose and broad yellow and black stripes. That's the scheme on the SD70MACs in the original poster's pictures. That came into use about 1997 or 1998. Starting then all newly-delivered Dash 9s and SD70MACs were delivered in that scheme. A few older wide-cab models, including Dash 8s, GP60Ms, SD60Ms and SD75Ms were repainted in that scheme. I don't think any of the older standard cab locomotives were repainted in that scheme.

Heritage I is the original, Great Northern-inspired orange/green scheme with circle cross nose logos and dark green BNSF lettering. The 960 and 1000 series Dash 9s were delivered in that scheme and were the first engines to wear it. Older standard cab models also were repainted in Heritage 1, with a variation: green, rather than silver trucks. I always thought this one maybe the best of the "orange" schemes. It also seems to me at least to look the best even as the paint ages.

RM

Rich Montague,

Thank you, very informative info.

Perfect on the Black and Swoosh is also my favorite of the logo's!

Alex...good choice even if I like the Swoosh Logo best! Here are a few BNSF units awaiting assignment in both the main freight yard and the intermodal facility....

Alan

So we have here a serious problem with the RAL codes (www.ralcolor.com) of Heritage II shades...
Bodyshell : Faded orange vs. Dark orange vs. Blood orange...
Roof : Dark green vs. Ocean blue vs. Dark turquoise
Trucks : shiny silver vs. Semigloss aluminum vs. Rusty/Dusty/dirty
Any other paintshop problems to address to the manufacturers (Lionel, MTH, Atlas, Williams...)?

Alan, you need to get more BNSF inventory. What you have shown is not nearly enough. I guess we can blame the PA.