I was watching a documentary film about the "Daylight" train this weekend and was struck by the attractiveness of the colours of both the engine and the carriages. The colour scheme of black, orange and red was particularly striking and it left me idly wondering why that tradition is not carried on today.
Whilst I think the red, white and blue stripes on Amtrak trains are not unappealing, the idea of having each individual service coloured a unique way could make rather nice identifiers. I suppose, though, that it would make the interchangeability of carriages etc between routes somewhat problematic and you could end up with a plethora of odd rainbow coloured trains which might not please everyone.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
The attractive Daylight livery described by Stephen W was phased out starting furing 1958 - well before A-Day.
Likely Stephen would have enjoyed being on the scene starting about November 1971 and continuing until about 1975. This was Amtrak's "Circus Train" or "Rainbow" era, where they had mixed various railroad's equipment. Union Pacific Yellow cars found their way on to trains such as the Broadway Limited.
The period of A-Day until November, it was hard to to even know that Amtrak even existed, as trains simply continued to have equipment assigned that was owned by the road over which the train operated.
The first "all-Amtrak" train was the Broadway Limited that debuted on Amtrak's forst anniversary. At that time, there was enough Amtrak liveried equipment on hand to enable this train to be assigned such equipment.
Posted by Mr. Toy (Member # 311) on :
Amtrak moves cars from route to route with some regularity, so having different color schemes would be a real problem.
I never saw an Amtrak train during the rainbow era, but I did become a regular rider during the time of Amtrak's "Phase I" paint scheme. During those years the car exteriors were uniformly painted, but the interiors still reflected the diversity of the pre-Amtrak railroads.
The Coast Starlight routinely had two styles of coaches in any given consist. One was a predominantly blue and white color scheme, while the other was pale green and white.
The blue cars had large rest rooms at each end (Ladies at one end, Men's at the other) with a smoking lounge, multiple sinks, but only one toilet. The hallway wrapped these rest rooms. These cars also had doors you pulled or pushed open depending on your direction.
The green cars had two sets of smaller rest rooms at each end with a straight hallway between them (though by Superliner standards these rest rooms were huge by comparison). The decor featured large round gold colored medallions at each end of the seating area depicting scenes from the American Southwest.
Lounge cars were also quite diverse on the Starlight. Some were decorated in a nice dark blue. Others were predominantly red. Some had the bar in the middle of the car, while others had the bar at one end, very much like the Pacific Parlour Cars. Sometimes the lounges were dome cars, sometimes full length, sometimes partial.
Dining cars, however, were pretty consistent, but during 1974 they also had a counter service dining car called a "snack car" placed in the middle of the coaches. I never saw the sleepers in those days, since I was a student traveling on the cheap.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
The "pale Green"cars you note, Mr. Toy, were ex-ATSF that were assigned to the pre-Superliner Starlight. Their interiors remained in Santa Fe motif.
The "Blue" cars you note were redecorated into an Amtrak motif of the time. These cars were "politely" referred to as "Bengstonized" in "honor" of an Amtrak interior designer named Bengston.
"Other than polite"....well....I just might find my membership around here terminated.
Posted by mgt (Member # 5479) on :
There was an attempt in the UK in the early 1960s to raise the profile of the Western Region of British Railways as it then was. Presumbly only on the Western Region as that was the one pre-grouping, 1923, company that had retained much of its indiduality and regional identity. It certainly was not uncommon in the 1960s to see engine crew cleaning their dark green locomotives. Passenger rolling stock was painted in the GWR's traditional chocolate/cream livery but the problems mentioned above, the mixing of stock with that of other regions, put an end to it. In the UK today there is quite a varity of paint schemes associated with different companies like Virgin and National Express. It did seem a tremendous waste of money when GNER lost its east cost inter-city franchise in 2007 and the new operator, National Express, set about repainting the whole fleet of trains.
Posted by dilly (Member # 1427) on :
This reminds me that the "Rainbow Era" began before Amtrak, at least on the Burlington Northern. If you see any pictures of the combined Empire Builder/North Coast Ltd./Twin Zephyr (Morning eastbound, Afternoon westbound), during the 14 months between the BN merger and A-day, you can see as many as five different color schemes. They were:
CB&Q unpainted stainless steel GN green & orange GN "Big Sky" blue NP two-tone green BN green & white
I personally prefer GN's Big Sky Blue to the earlier green & orange because the green portion almost always photographed as brown. Is it just me or has anyone else noticed this? This was one instance where paintings had an advantage over photography.
The most interesting consist I rode on was the San Francisco Zephyr from Chicago to Oakland on my first cross country Amtrak trip in August 75. In the middle of the train there were: an Empire Builder "ranch" car with its original interior; a CB&Q dome coach and a Chessie dome observation lounge named "Linoma". Unfortunately, all three of these cars came off in Denver and were replaced by an ordinary SP lounge with ancient furniture instead of one of SP's "homemade" domes. There were also two CZ observation cars deadheading in the rear to Denver. On the return trip, the diner on the hi-level section of the Southwest Ltd. conked out, so I got to eat breakfast in the Turquoise Room.
It was fun to walk the train in those days, write down the car numbers and look them up in my Amtrak Spotter's Guide to find out where all the cars came from.