I was at the beach yesterday that is convinently located on the BNSF Seattle-Everett main line when I hear a Train aproching. No I could see three engines coming around a curve, the first two were BNSF C44's in HII but the third one looked differant, it apreared to be yellow with a green roof, I got really excited thinking it might be a CNW engine, but as it got closer it turned out to be a BNSF HII Dash 9 that had faded extremly bad, it was in the 4400 series, is this happing to alot of the dash 9's? It is the first one I have seen like that. Kevin
From what I have heard, a certain batch of these (probably the 4400s) got a bad batch of paint that is fading really fast. It also may have spent a lot of time in the sun, but who knows. Paint these days seems to not be lasting very long.
Seems like alot of GE had paint problems CR C40-8W faded white ATSF C40-8W warbonnets fade pink CSX C40-8W faded blue to white and yellow to some ugly yellowish white. some NS C40-8 seemed to lightened up a little UP had some C40-8W and C44-9W fading issues and CNW C40-8 had fading issues kinda strange eh?
Its not GE thats creating the paint problems, its the paint. The Heritage I C44-9Ws paint is still holding strong. Fading paint also appears on EMD units, such as UP's harbor mist grey on several SD60Ms and SP's paint on GP60s. New standards for paint have decreased the quality of the paint. Since the fading Heritage II paint appears to be a problem through out all painting facilities, BNSF is looking at it as a paint manufacturer problem. ATSF's Dash 9s have a better quality paint than the Dash 8s too. badley faded Heritage II units have been nicknamed "Peaches" do their peach-like color.
BNSF buys whatever paint is cheapest at the time (UP also). the BNSF4400-4500 series C44-9W, BNSF (SF) 500 series B40-8W, and others are examples. UP's 6200 & 6300 SD60Ms also have this problem, they look like the skin desease that causes discoloration. [ 21 March 2001: Message edited by: upfoamer1 ]
