For me, the Southern Pacific is my favorite railroad followed closely by the Santa Fe. I live in Arizona and these railroads split my state, the SP in the south and the SF in the north. The SF merged with some dignity being the BNSF name includes "SF". Unfortunately we lose the beautiful and classic war bonnet paint schemes we all love. The BNSF did retain the New Mexico herald across the nose but the classic colors are gone. I would have much rather they split the fleet colors in classic BN and SF colors while adding the BNSF name. As far as the Southern Pacific, the Union Pacific completely absorbed and eliminated the SP. The SP has a single "heritage" unit to proclaim its 1865 to 1996 operation span, and that heritage unit is in steam colors. The SP was probably mismanaged for much of the 1980's and mid 1990's but for what the SP gave, for UP to give nothing back is wrong. I've seen You Tube videos from 2014 with SP painted locos running in consist with UP in the midwest. I haven't seen an SP painted locomotive in Arizona in many years. I think it's messed up. I think it's wrong for UP to erase SP, they should paint 10% of their fleet in the gray and scarlet with the SP name (and UP patch) to honor what they've acquired. I don't like that they've erased SP, it's wrong.
Steve, there are quite a few in SP paint, most of them "patched" but some not. I feel your pain, having witnessed my once great and now late New York Central merged with long time competitor Pennsylvania. That didn't work, ending in bankruptcy and disappearance of both "fallen flags."
Mine wasn't merged until a few years after they'd made a huge mistake and mess by abandoning the profitable portion. A double whammy. Not much fun to follow.
I was actually pretty happy about it. BN was and will always be my fave, but I loved Santa Fe as well. That's one of the reason I model a few years post-merger, so I can still model almost all of the heritage schemes/motive power, yet still have the new BNSF identity as well. And the trains on the line I model got a little more interesting after that, too.
You dont see Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Spokane Portland & Seattle or Chicago, Burlington & Quincy heritage or anything else from those roads that were asorbed by Burlington Northern in 1971
I've actually seen all but SP&S in the past 2-3 years. GN gon, NP flat, and CB&Q hopper....even with a decent Burlington Route logo intact! Or I go visit the Oregen Joint Line in N-scale just up the road...I see a ton of all of those there.
Actually today was the 45th anniversary of BN! March 2, 1970. I did not see anyone mention this date.
The RR I model has been the "victor" C&O leads into Chessie which then leads into CSX. C&O while no longer a separate name is the controlling line in its mergers, it is the one taking over and controlling the others. Just not HQ'd in Cleveland or VA anymore, can you blame them with how nice the weather is in FL?
I'm not at all a fan of the mergers of the Santa Fe with the BN and the Chicago & North Western with UP. Had paint schemes stayed the same or similar, I wouldn't have a beef with it. I remember seeing my 1st locomotive of both the ATSF and C&NW. The ATSF was on a family vacation across country, and I witnessed a nice lash up of the blue and yellow warbonnets dashing across New Mexico. I always think of that trip when I see that color scheme. As for the C&NW, I saw my first traveling through Chicago on the way to Wisconsin Dells. Both of these railroads have storied pasts that seemed to end for me in the 90s.
Steve, if you would like to see SP Locos arm yourself with your camera a fresh battery and head on down to the UP Staging Yard in Tucson and have some fun. On a daily basis there are many for you to take pictures of; I know I used to live there and caught many on any given day. But I agree with you UP(Da BORG) didn't do us right at all. In my world SP will always live.
