Milwaukee Road in the 21st Century

JKD Jul 11, 2007

  1. JKD

    JKD TrainBoard Member

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    I'm beginning a project that will include not only my new layout (see discussion in the Layout Design area), but also new locomotives and rolling stock.

    I've decided to model the railroad that my grandfather worked for, that my father worked for, and that I grew up with a love for. I am, however, a fan of modern big locomotives, and I've decided to take a twist on history.

    In my world, the Milwaukee Road never went bankrupt. I'm planning to model the MILW as if it were one of the big railroads still running today.

    As the first part of the project, I (and a friend I'm working with) were kicking around some paint ideas. I'm posting two schemes up here for your opinions.

    In both schemes the orange is intended to be the classic orange that MILW freight locomotives wore. Lettering on the long hoods is intended to be in a silver/gray. The Milwaukee logo on the cabs will revert to the CMSP&P logo to indicate that the railroad is, after years of shrinking, growing again, while the classic Hiawatha logo will be on the nose of the locos and the long hoods. We're discussing putting "Milwaukee Wings" similar to some Olympian Hiawatha F units on the front of the wide-cab units.

    Scheme 1: Drawn on an SD90MAC-H
    The gray part on this loco is intended to be a medium gray similar to the gray worn by some of the MILW passenger F units. The sill is done in all yellow to be the high-reflective material mandated by the FRA (similar to the yellow sills on UP locos).

    Scheme 2: Drawn on an SD40-2
    I eliminated the black separation line between the orange and black/gray and darkened the gray to almost black. The sill got white stripes instead of the solid yellow of scheme 1.

    Thoughts, criticism, opinions, all are welcome.
     

    Attached Files:

  2. jagged ben

    jagged ben TrainBoard Member

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    Maybe you should throw in some patched CP units...heheh
     
  3. OC Engineer JD

    OC Engineer JD Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    The SD90MAC-H is awesome......just what the MILW would have progressed to had they bought those! Nice job! :)
     
  4. Grey One

    Grey One TrainBoard Supporter

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  5. Greenlightintermodal

    Greenlightintermodal TrainBoard Member

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    Yes, the SD-90 does look nice.

    I can envision them pulling a string of double stacks with some Milwaukee Road 53' containers in the mix :eek:mg:

    Steven
     
  6. HemiAdda2d

    HemiAdda2d Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Very nice! Are current decals the order of the day, or will these all be custom?

    I did a fantasy loco set a few years back--SD90MAC's in BN tigerstripes, and a whiteface/fuel tender set. The back page of an NSR mag years back of a MILW SD90MAC inspired it.
     
  7. JKD

    JKD TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks!

    I haven't looked at existing decals. Most likely, since the lettering is going to have to be custom, and the logo for the nose will need to be custom (Hiawatha with wings on the wide noses) then I'll want to just do custom decals for the whole deal so as to not have to match colors.
     
  8. JKD

    JKD TrainBoard Member

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    Fun stuff, Grey One. I like the fantasy part of paint scheme design. Part of why I'm doing a current day MILW. Thanks!
     
  9. Ottergoose

    Ottergoose TrainBoard Member

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    They look nice - I'd prefer to see the orange on bottom, black on top, but that's just me. Prototypically speaking, that paint would be easier to keep clean looking... all of the exhaust would make orange on top look cruddy fast. Your call obviously, just my $0.02.
     
  10. JKD

    JKD TrainBoard Member

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    I wanted a scheme that still had ties to the historical MILW but would not confuse with trying to model (most) actual MILW equipment.

    I think there are some examples of the "light" color on top floating around out there in the real world too. KCS is putting silver on the top of the locomotives, red in the region where I have orange, and yellow/black banding at the bottom. Several regionals also have lighter colors on top.

    If clean was the idea, I'd be doing all Green Goats. The stuff is supposed to get dirty. 8)

    Thanks though, Ottergoose. All opinions are welcome. I know there are going to be MILW purists who HATE this so your reaction wasn't unexpected.
     
  11. Ottergoose

    Ottergoose TrainBoard Member

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    Hey now, I said that I liked it! Heck, a lot of SOO units were (nearly) all white - how's that for a scheme that looks clean all the time :eek:mg:
     
  12. JKD

    JKD TrainBoard Member

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    Oh... no no... don't misunderstand. I appreciate what you said. 8)

    KCS was all white, then all gray.
    Oregon California & Eastern was all bright yellow
    There are lots of examples.

    I wasn't referring to you. I had shown my drawings to a few not-on-line MILW friends. Most liked it. A few die hard MILW people didn't, and if they didn't they didn't like it strongly. All I was saying is that I was expecting opinions to differ.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 11, 2007
  13. JKD

    JKD TrainBoard Member

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    Hmmm... now Jagged Ben, that's not a bad idea. I love locomotives that could be seen as "oddballs". I wouldn't mind "patching" something like CP 4522... a GP38-2 built out of a GP40X.
     
  14. milw156

    milw156 TrainBoard Member

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    HemiAdda2d: The back page of an NSR mag years back of a MILW SD90MAC inspired it

    Glad you liked it!
     
  15. dave n

    dave n TrainBoard Supporter

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    Way cool! I like the black separation line -- plus if you did it with a black decal you could hide any paint line imperfections.

    Since the FRA now requires a solid yellow stripe on the sill like you mention, you could do the same and be 'correct' by today's standards.

    Anyway, I like both of the schemes -- personally I like the SD90 scheme a little better. Can't wait to see it in real life on a model!! Or, do both, and say that they modified their scheme a bit when they got their new wide-cab units!
     
  16. Triplex

    Triplex TrainBoard Member

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    FEC has the underframe, tank and trucks white on their SD70M-2s. Imagine how easy that's going to be to keep clean...

    I like that you're sticking with MILW's characterisitc number positioning. I always liked that about their scheme.

    Since I tend to favor boldness, I like the SD40-2 better. The black (okay, it isn't really black, but that's what I first thought it was meant to represent) and orange make it resemble a color-swap on the familiar scheme. If I were doing this, I wouldn't make the whole front of the nose orange, though. I'd probably go for orange warning stripes, giving a sort of BN or CP look. But that's just because I like that style.
     
  17. JKD

    JKD TrainBoard Member

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    Would you put the stripes in the BN way (one direction) and wide, or in a "V" or inverted "V" manner? Should they be white or another color? That's something I thought about, but I was trying to stay with some characteristics of the old MILW scheme and they didn't use the stripes.

    The first loco for this project is going to be an SD40-2. I'm debating about shortening the fuel tank to the correct MILW length on about 1/2 the SD40-2's, reasoning that with better finances, the railroad would have rebuilt the right of way and the larger tanks would have been added durring extended rebuilds.
     
  18. JKD

    JKD TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks Dave!
    I like both. I'm tempted to do three "phases" of this scheme.

    Phase 1: As seen on the SD40-2
    Phase 2: As seen on the SD90
    Phase 3: Same as SD90 but with what I'll call "Milwaukee Wings" on the noese instead of the orange and the Hiawatha.

    If BNSF can have multiple schemes, and UP can have them too, then so can I! 8)
     
  19. Triplex

    Triplex TrainBoard Member

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    I was thinking of one direction, but I suppose the others would also work.

    It's just one of my pet peeves about paint schemes. I don't mind if the front of the nose is a different color (EL, for example), but front and top one color and sides another? I don't like that. I went through the step of imagining a black front on the nose, then wondered about visibility. Besides, that would look plain. Since I was still starting with your picture, I thought about "tiger stripes" - orange and black, like BN had. Then again, they did stop using those - did they find they had poor visibility?

    Just thinking out loud here.
     
  20. JKD

    JKD TrainBoard Member

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    I think it'll get a different feel when the Hiawatha logo is on the front of the nose.

    I was inspired by some pics of Alaska GP49's for the layout of the paint on the nose. I wanted the orange to show there, but didn't just want to do a solid orange noes and cab.

    I'll have to try the tiger strip in a drawing. I've got some pics of BN GP50's wearing it, and they look good. I don't know if it was so much a visibility issue as they decided to go with the white face because it is brighter?
     

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