What Railroads E Series Locomotives And Passenger Cars Were In Amtraks Early Days Consist Before Being Painted?

There were only e8's in Amtrak early days. Painted in Pointless arrow and bloddy nose scheme.

Take your pick.  BN,(CB&Q) UP, SP, PC, Milw, C&O, IC, etc. You'd also see BN (ex NP and GN) Santa Fe and SP F-units pulling early Amtrak.

They didn't call it the "rainbow era" for nothing.

Rusty

Here are a few pics, but if you want to see many more examples just do a search for Amtraks rainbow trains and you'll see various sites that have many photos of them. 

Here's a link for rainbow era E's.

Rusty

And a few more...

Thank you for the pictures.  I just won a brand new MTH Premier B&O E-8 B unit on Ebay like the one below that I will put behind my Amtrak Phase I E-8.

Now to find some individual phase I passenger cars to add to my consist.

Here's two of mine from those days:

UP in Cheyenne, WY.

Penn Central on the Washington section of the Broadway Limited at Hummelstown, PA.

Thank you for the reply with those pics Bill.  It looks like I have another option as it appears that the UP E-8 in the upper picture is leading a pair of SDP40F's.  I just got my MTH Railking Scale FP-45's which are close to the SDP40F in appearance.  I wonder what was the last Amtrak E-8 in operation in it previous colors and what in what year?

I doubt anything hung around in its previous paint past 1975. The steam heat E's were done around 1980, the HEP ones hung around a while longer, 1984-1985.

If had to guess, the black ones (ex-PC) probably stayed black the longest, since they would have been recently repainted anyways.

The "rainbow" era can pretty much be considered done by 1976.

I believe that some GM&O E7's were also used between Milwaukee and St. Louis.

Maybe they were actually ICG? Anyway, they still wore the GM&O livery.

The ICG was formed in 1972, so conceivably they could've operated on Amtrak trains for a year or two as GM&O units.

To the best of my knowlege the GM&O E7's were never repainted or renumbered.  As I recall, only one carbody unit, an F3, got the ICG treament.

Rusty

I don't think any of the Missouri Pacific E8s went into Amtrak service except maybe very early at Amtrak startup.

The New York-Kansas City National Limited  often ran with black PC units.

Rusty, I think two ex GM&O F's get the ICG white/orange scheme.

Dan

"The New York-Kansas City National Limited  often ran with black PC units."

Picture worth 1000 words dept: National Limited in St. Louis Union Station, June 1973.

If the GM&O units were operating Amtrak trains, wouldn't they have belonged to Amtrak at that point, thus not operating under the ICG at any time?  Or was GM&O still operating passenger service after Amtrak's birth?

Thanks Rusty!