I recall seeing a long time ago some blue C&NW covered hoppers. Not ex Rock cars in bankruptcy blue, but a darker blue-green color. All my google searching comes up with no information about this, or any paint schemes really. Does anyone know if C&NW did actually have blue covered hoppers, or were they dark green ones that faded and oxidized to a blueish color?
I don't recall any, except the ex-RI cars. Their blue cannot be close to what you've described. Perhaps your guess of weathered from green toward a blue-ish hue is correct.
I think I found some evidence, not sure how or why this one looks the way it does, but it is green that faded blue. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=762964
Ahh and there's this. Also faded I suspect. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2848284
Those do definitely look like blue paint. But it sure looks much deeper blue than anything Rock. That first one appears to be a repaint which has peeled. So the question becomes, did they buy some 'used' cars and repaint? Or?
I sure thought it was blue. They had three colors: dark blue, dark green, and yellow. Their covered hoppers were painted like that. Maybe I have been looking at too many models.
I used to see them all the time in Cheyenne, WY on the UP. Here's the Rock version: Green: And the blue one: Even a gray one:
That's a different logo style from any I can recall ever seeing. Almost seems kind of crude compared to a Ball & Bar decal.
Interesting. It seems to me that the "dark green" ones that Intermountain does ( http://www.intermountain-railway.com/n/images/65301mw.jpg ) are somewhat "Blue-Green" so I guess I just assumed those were faded. Those are some great weathering pics though, regardless! Surely there's a Northwestern expert that can chime in here? They certainly look bonafide BLUE. I gotta think they painted them a "green" that was really sorta "green-blue" and then had a batch of paint that arrived more "blue-green" than green-blue and then faded quickly. Or something like that...
Fine examples! From what I was able to find, there is 70's green with yellow herald, 70's gray with black and white herald, a few 70's pea green with yellow hearld, 80's safety yellow with anything from no herald at all to crude stenciled herald, to a nice black, red, and white herald. Finally sometime in teh 90's they started painting them green again, but it's a bit different brighter shade of green, and a black red and white herald. Looking back at all these pictures again, it's difficult to tell what with all the shadows and grime, but the bottom of the hopper bays on all of them appear to be green!
Got a response back. He says there were indeed a green which went to blue. He also suggested taking a look here. Looks like a loooong page, so I did not scroll. Perhaps something of value can be spotted therein: http://www.cnwhs.org/faq.pl?command=fulllist
Fantastic, thanks for the effort everyone! I knew this would be the right place to ask! All my Googling around and the info was right there on the cnwhs site the whole time.
They were all painted green but some of them quickly faded to a blue? I believe it. You never know. I read about a guy who worked in the Santa Fe paint shop and was painting two diesels in the kodachrome scheme. They only had Espee Daylight orange so the head guy told them to use that! Somewhere out there is a couple of orangy looking ATSF kodachromes. You never know.
Flash nailed it. Remember one of the first batches of BNSF SD70MACs to come out in BNSF colors? They faded to a grimy pink in no time flat. Look at the "pink" Superfleet Dash 9's nowadays!
