Talked to Robert Del Grosso a few weeks back, and what he said made sense, BN didn't seem to come into its own until 85 to 90. Where as ATSF was established since the dawn of time. So BN was getting its own fans for 5 to 10 years before it merged and disappeared into history.
When I was a Railfair '91 at the Sacramento Railroad Museum I was wearing a T-shirt with a GP60M and the caption "The warbonnets are back", a guy in a suit came up to me and said, "and I'm the guy who brought 'em back" and walked off grinning. I only realized afterward who he must have been. The cat's whisker scheme may have been the product of EMD's design team, the scheme later appeared with tuscan red substituting for blue on New South Wales Govt. Railways 42 class in 1955. http://members.ozemail.com.au/~pturtle/pictures/4204_Blayney.jpg and was later adapted for several other diesel classes.
If the BN paint scheme/s had a name, it/they would be called, Budd Tugly! No one can say that about the war bonnet.
I think the War Bonnets are cool, especially on F units. My very first model train was was a Sears/Tyco set, with a Santa Fe AB set, that I got for Christmas when I was 8. I still have the set and it still runs fine. Probably because of this set I have a "War Bonnet thing." I have two ABBA sets of F7's. A Kato set that is mine and a Bachmann Spectrum set that is really my 8 year old daughter's. I also have a LL War Bonnet E8. I have no justification for owning these other than, "War Bonnets are cool." Then again, I don't need any other justification.
That's your opinion, I like the BN scheme as that is what I grew up with. And the various schemes did have names. The Executive units and SD70MACs all were in the executive scheme. There is the whiteface units and the nose stripes. And for the matter, I don't like the War Bonnet...but when I didn't see one until I was 15, and at that point I was pretty established with BN, probably explains it.
It's a shame that people have no shame dragging someone into the mud with no actual evidence. While the exec colors appeared on BN 1 / 2 before they were applied on the 70MAC's, I might point out that the the way in which they're used on both locomotives is very different; the bands on the 70MAC's have angles/bibs/etc. that don't appear on the original livery, which was a rather bland band that simply wrapped around the engines horizontally. Furthermore, the fact that they were evaluating SD60 variants, and not SD70 variants at the time is irrelevant; the exec scheme in question easily could have been used on any of the big safety cab locomotives. My guess would be that he was inspired by the original executive units and drew a mockup of an SD60M in it, sent it to BN, and it somehow found its way onto the 70MAC's.
Well being the SD60MAC already had a different scheme. http://www.trainpix.com/bn/EMDORIG/SD60MAC/9500.HTM Take a look, completely different from all the other BN units.
I couldn't find any pictures to link to but I think the best variation of the standard BN scheme were the units with a white pinstripe separating the green and black, the stripe added a touch of class. Back to Santa Fe, another experimental, short lived variation were a few FTs painted all over blue with just the cigar band and 'Santa Fe' in yellow. Then there was the PA in gold and silver warbonnet for a GE advertising campaign.