Looks like you used the Art Danz designed "Lightning Bolt" Hiawatha scheme. Too bad the railroad isn't still with us, as that was simple, yet handsome.
That would seem to fit. It was one or two digits for horsepower, one letter for manufacturer combined with RS (road switcher) or S (switcher), plus the number of total powered axles.
That's right. One of the best paint schemes ever. This pair i decided to try a hybrid paint scheme, so they have small white roadnumbers up near the radiators. The other pair looks the same, except they have the large black roadnumbers at the rear beneath the radiators, for a true Hiawatha scheme. They all have low, 2-digit roadnumbers, so I guess they would be locotrol master units. I was a bit worried that they are GE units, because I know the Milwaukee had some problems with their U-boats, but I figured that a more well managed Milwaukee Road would have allocated more maintenance resources to the GE's to keep them running smoothly. I also managed to convince the painter to do a couple SD45's in the lightning bolt, too, so I can either claim that they were actual Milwaukee Road locos, or I've made up a cover story that the Milwaukee could have bought some ex-Southern Pacific units that had been rebuilt to SD45-2s but kept the SD45 bodies, just like the Montana Rail-link did. It makes perfect sense to me, and then I could even run them with the Dash 9's if I wanted because they would be the same era. I am also working on a couple modern logos of my own, so hopefully I could get some custom decals of my own made up and paint a few more locos in my own paint scheme. I really like the look of the SD80's, with the opening under the walkways on one side, and their big radiators. The shape of the radiators actually lends itself quite well to the outline of the orange and black colours, as can be seen on the Dash 9's.
So, I was at the local train club over the weekend, running my Milwaukee Road mixed freight with my two of my Dash-9's and the other guys there who surely must be some of the biggest customers of PWRS and have an endless supply of rotary gondolas for sulphur loads and BCRail coal trains and Canadian Wheat Board hoppers for grain unit trains, happened to say they don't buy boxcars anymore because they really just don't exist these days. Apparently the only thing trains haul these days are bulk commodities in long, generic unit trains. Anyway, with limited funds, I can't really buy out the entire inventory of PWRS, although I do have quite a few hoppers in the federal yellow billboard scheme, so I can make a fairly decent sized Milwaukee grain train. I'm just curious if, besides designing mythical paint schemes, whether anyone else besides me has given any serious thought to how a modern Milwaukee Road would operate, and what traffic would it carry? Would it really be nothing more than an endless procession of containers and autoracks out of Tacoma? Would there be any of those boring unit coal trains and sulphur gondolas? Would BNSF try and get running rights over Snoqalmie Pass to take advantage of the easier grades there?
My fear would be we'd see what we know today on BNSF. Boring, same old, trashed cars. Worse yet, with the BNSF paint scheme, the two companies would look rather similar. UGH.
I did notice that they seem to have ripped off the Milwaukee paint scheme. Anything related to the Hill Lines, past or present, just seems to have some envious grudge against the Milwaukee. I'm not in a geographical location to really see the BNSF operations, but it sounds like they've got some problems, If they are using old and trashed cars, how CN is the one with all the derailments? But we're trying to maintain a little optimism here.
"Boring, same old, trashed cars." Same old, separated by commas. As in reference to same old stuff. Solid coal trains, solid grainers, etc. Not the kind of variety we'd see a few decades back. "Trashed", meaning grubby and sprayed with all kinds of mindless baloney by vandals. Although the cars are in decent mechanical condition, every train going past has numerous wheels flattened to some extent, banging away. Future rail breakers, etc, which sure could eventually be a derailment.
In keeping with my ever growing fleet of fantasy locos, I recently acquired two SD70Macs in Milwaukee colours. I guess judging by the farm setting, and multi-track mainline, we could pretend that the photo location is somewhere south of Tacoma with a pool freight, on the joint UP trackage heading south to Portland.
Just try not to say it about the Milwaukee Road... I'm mean, I'm trying to be optimistic here: I've got a nice orange and black SD70, and CEFX lease unit. Okay, so I have a CN SD90, but it's not in the lead, so hopefully it will stay on the track. Also I remembered what Boxcab said about how the BNSF colours are so similar to the Milwaukee, so I found a picture that could easily be a modern day train on Pipestone Pass if they had a directional running set up or some similar operation out of Butte. http://www.railroads-of-montana.com/2012 02 February.jpg
Okay, guys. I have another idea. I just managed to pick up two con-cor autoracks. They aren't the most perfect models, I know, but the undecorated ones come in this maroon-ish colour that seems too almost match the Milwaukee's boxcar colour. At least it matches the colour of the Athearn 60' PS Auto Parts boxcars, so I think that's okay. So now that I have some cars that are almost the right colour, in my ongoing quest to resurrect the Milwaukee Road, I'm also trying to design a paint scheme for the autoracks. I will probably use HO scale decals to make a large logogram style herald on the side of each car, but I'm curious if anyone thinks it would be better to use just a large wafer logo, or to actually put a Hiawatha logo on the side of an autorack? Let me know if you have any suggestions.
Somebody else has gotten in on the fun. This is the link to the FVM Fantasy Units by Roanoke Shops custom N scale models · https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.868125109882125.1073741849.556671511027488&type=3
Finally remembered I had something new to post. I got a bit lucky, because one of the club members built a new module that has a nice tunnel portal with scenery around it that looks fairly arid, so it could fairly easily be Boylston Tunnel in the Saddle Range. At the latest show, I tried to take advantage of the scene:
If only that were true, but alas, it's only in N scale. Although if you come to the local train show up here in mid-October, I'll probably have a few 21st Century Milwaukee Road trains running, then.
