Grassroots Railroad Sports?

In a move that no one seemed to see coming, CSX has unveiled their very first heritage unit, CSX #1827. The number references the year of the Baltimore & Ohio's founding, and the livery is CSX "Yellow Nose 3" on the cab, with the classic B&O livery on the hood. Now, I've heard dissenting reports on the livery: some are saying that the unit was rushed out to be ready for the CSX employee picnic with the split livery, others are saying that that is the actual finished livery, with the idea being that it's still distinctly a CSX unit while paying homage to CSX's ancestry. The YN3 with the B&O livery works pretty well, but with another 19 heritage units supposedly on the way, I could see the blue and yellow clashing on some.

A sunlit photo of it. The two different shades of blue are a little harder to discern, but if they'd just used the same shade of blue throughout, it'd really work well. Again though, this is possibly just temporary and the whole unit might be painted into the B&O livery. The 25-75 split is kind of a neat idea though, because it's still visibly a CSX unit, while paying tribute to CSX's heritage, and is also different from NS and CN's full vintage paint or UP's modern interpretation of classic liveries.

As for what other CSX heritage units to expect, well, a C&O one seems a given. Which livery? No clue, C&O had a bunch, although they were all very similar with subtle differences.

There was the gray, yellow and blue passenger livery.

The simpler blue and yellow freight cab unit livery

And the dark blue and yellow road switcher livery.

And even then, there were slight variants on all those. The passenger livery would be the flashiest, but all of them use the basic CSX coloring. The funny thing is the CSX takes their livery primarily from C&O, who really just used Pere Marquette's livery after the C&O merged them in in '47, and Pere Marquette said they based their liveries off of University of Michigan colors.

The Western Maryland, the third component of the C part of CSX, has two great liveries. There's the classic black with yellow trim and lettering and red fireball logo.

And there's the later "circus" red, white and black livery.

Of the two, I much prefer the fireball livery.

From what someone says, a Chessie System heritage unit is already in the works, which makes me very excited. The Chessie System orange, yellow and dark blue is one of the best "modern" liveries. Just a year or so ago, CSX actually cosmetically restored and painted a B30-7 in Chessie System livery before donating it to LAke Shore Railway Museum, so they've got some practice.

Over on the S(eaboard) side of CSX, you've first got Seaboard Air Line. I'll be honest, I think most of SAL's liveries were absolutely wretched.

You've got the original brown, tan and orange passenger livery.

As well as the later brown, tan and red.

As well as the rather unusual mint green with red striping for their passenger livery. Yes, that looks white, and it's hard to see in photographs and faded to white, but it was actually a very light mint green. 

Yeah, I'm not a big SAL fan.

Atlantic Coast Line used a rather eye-opening purple, yellow and silver that almost has an MBTA vibe to it.

Sadly that was supplanted with a pretty mundane black and yellow.

Over at Louisville & Nashville, you had a dark blue, cream and orange passenger livery that was really stunning.

The freight side used a similar design, just with gray and yellow

Also part of Seaboard Systems was the Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio, better known as just the Clinchfield. Despite being a lesser-known railroad, CSX has always been oddly proud of the Clinchfield. They still run the Santa Train that Clinchfield started and they have an F7A and an SD45 in Clinchfield colors that they use for special events, so a Clinchfield heritage unit seems pretty likely, either in the early light gray with yellow nose, or the later black with yellow accents. Again, another one that's oddly CSX-adjacent.

The counterpart to Chessie Systems was Seaboard Systems, a holding company that owned the various assets of the Clinchfield, L&N, and Seaboard Coast Line (the merged ACL and SAL). They used a pretty boring battleship gray with red and yellow stripes. I'll be honest, the Seaboard side of the Chessie-Seaboard merger is pretty meh.

After the CSX merger, they went on to acquire Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac, which used an extremely dark blue with gray paint in a layout similar to ACL's.

Of course, there's also Conrail, which it split with NS in 1999. And if you want to follow the chain, the part of Conrail that they got was the New York Central half of Penn Central. So will there be Conrail, PC and NYC heritage units? They'd make sense (NS similarly has Conrail, PC, PRR and NYC heritage units). It kind of turns into how far down the rabbit hole they want to go. L&N would make sense for representation, but what about railroads L&N acquired, like Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis, the Monon, or the Chicago & Eastern Illinois? Or if you really want to get off into the weeds, the tracks CSX use from Fulton-Oswego are actually ex-New York, Ontario & Western, which New York Central bought after the NYO&W's abandonment in 1957. I'd love an NYO&W heritage unit, but that seems like a deep cut. Or what about the newly acquired Pan Am Railways? There you have Pan Am, Guilford, Maine Central, and Boston & Maine. Oh, a Boston & Maine red and gold heritage unit would look great, but B&M is only part of CSX's heritage since last year. It's a slippery slope for sure.

I will say, I feel like we're on the cusp of seeing a very different CSX. There's been some changes with the company recently that are very interesting. A big one was Jim Foote basically falling on his sword over CSX's lackluster performance and poor customer relations and retiring. His replacement, Joe Hinrichs, has already said that the railroad needs to focus on growing traffic volume and less on cost-saving and is pivoting away from the absurd extremes of PSR and towards running like an actual railroad. There's also the sudden, pretty much out-of-the-blue, unveiling of heritage units. And CSX has also been playing nice with a number of preservation efforts: they helped move NC&StL #576 and donated a boxcar to serve as a toolcar, they've been moving stuff and donating diesels and an entire yard to the Kentuck Steam Heritage Corporation, they helped preserve an ex-L&N C30-7 and repainted it before moving it to it's new home, they cosmetically restored and painted a B30-8 into Chessie System colors and donated it to Lake Shore Railway Museum. I know that Kentucky Steam Heritage Corp. has said the first place that C&O 2-8-4 #2716 will operate at is Railroad Museum of New England, and it wouldn't surprise me if the ferry move is over CSX rails. As someone who lives deep in CSX territory, if CSX wants to be the new cool Class I, I'm okay with it.

I'm pretty excited about the whole deal with C&O #2716 coming up to Railroad Museum of New England once it's running. It's rare that we get a steam locomotive visiting this far north, and RMNE should give plenty of space for #2716 to stretch her legs. 

On the subject of throwback paint schemes, New York, Susquehanna & Western had finally repainted their four ex-Norfolk Southern SD70M-2s. They got them back in '05-'06 and they have been running around in NS black and white with the horse painted over and the NYS&W circled-S logo applied in place. They finally painted them this spring in the NYS&W yellow and black, and they applied SUSQUEHANNA lettering across the top of the nose. That's a touch that's been missing on NYS&W locomotives since the GE B40-8s that they had back in the late-'80s and then got rid of in '99-'00.

But, even more surprising was they unveiled SD40-2 #3024 which they went totally retro on and painted in the original silver and maroon livery that they used on their Alco RS-1s and Alco S-2s that they dieselized with in the early-'40s.

Official video on the heritage units from CSX:

In reply to NickD :

I have to admit I actually really like that SAL E4 #3005. It has a cool art deco vibe to it. Of course a large part is that it's one of the best looking diesels ever produced. You could cover one in E36 M3 & it would likely still be a good looking loco. 

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

When it comes to the early shovel-nose E-units, I prefer either the Baltimore & Ohio gray, dark blue, black and gold, or the Missouri Pacific's cream, dark blue, silver and red livery designed by Raymond Loewy.

EMD went away from the shovelnose design of the EA/E3/E4/E5/E6/TA mostly for cost-savings and ease of construction, but I've heard that there were also concerns that in collisions, things would possibly ride up the steeply angled nose and hit the cab, whereas the more upright F-Unit/E7/E8/E9 nose was less prone to that. Not sure how true that is, but I can see where it might be true.

Missouri Pacific also owned the unusual EMC AA, MP #7100, which looks very similar to an E6A. The major difference was that rather than the second 1000hp 567 V12 and generator and two A1A trucks, it had a baggage compartment and a 3-axled idler truck in the rear, making it an A1A-3 wheel arrangement. It was constructed specifically for use on the Delta Eagle, which was proclaimed to be "the Shortest full-sized streamliner to ever see regular service on a US railroad" at its inception of service on May 11, 1941. The train operated on Missouri Pacific trackage from Memphis, TN to Tallulah, LA, and used two unique lightweight passenger cars constructed by St.Louis Car Company in April, 1941. The first car was #760, which contained a 15 foot Railway Post Office section for sorting letters and mail. The coach section contained 60 seats and this car was reserved for the black passengers, since Jim Crow was alive and well and segregation was rigidly enforced on passenger trains of the south until 1964. The second car was normally the #732 and it contained a small grill for food service. Three patrons could sit at the counter and be served, while the first set of coach seats were arranged around a pair of tables which offered sit down service for 8 patrons. The white passengers rode in this car. The #7100 was usually replaced by a steam locomotive when it was in the shop, and there are also photos of one of the lightweight passenger cars replaced by a heavyweight car on occasion. The unique, and rarely photographed, #7100 kicked around until 1962, but the Delta Eagle vanished into obscurity in 1954.

The giveaway on the EMC AA was the square windows on the baggage compartment doors. The EMC E6 was regularly built with square windows along the sides of it, but Missouri Pacific preferred to custom order theirs with round portholes instead, and EMC was much more willing to do custom builds for customers at that era, before GM began exerting full control of the company. But while the EMC AA had the round portholes on the body sides, it had a square window for the baggage compartment. Also, slightly less obvious in this angle, is the lack of the second cooling fan setup in the roof for the second engine.

Baldwin also built something very similar to the EMC AA, which they called a DR-6-2-1000, which stood for Diesel Road, 6 total axles, 2 powered axles, 1000 horsepower. They took one of their "babyface" DR-6-4-2000 passenger cab units, which was basically an E7 competitor, dumped one of the 1000hp 606SC supercharged inline-6s and it's corresponding generator, removed the traction motors off the rear truck, and filled the empty space with a baggage comaprtment. There was only one constructed, and it was sold to the Chicago & North Western as their #5000A. C&NW assigned it to local service, where they were hauling short trains and didn't need a full-length baggage service, and it kicked around in this usage until 1958, when it was scrapped. Again, a rarely photographed unit, this photo captures it in a precarious position, having missed the turntable with the lead truck.

A Baldwin builder's photo of C&NW #5000A at Eddystone.

In my youth I remember the purple ACL trains running down through Northwest Dade County Florida (Miami)  from Hollywood down through Opalocka.  I believe they were called the Orange Blossom Special, and I think that bluegrass song originated in OpaLocka. (fact check needed)

I always thought they were the best looking locomotives.  So modern looking compared to steam units.

Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:

In my youth I remember the purple ACL trains running down through Northwest Dade County Florida (Miami)  from Hollywood down through Opalocka.  I believe they were called the Orange Blossom Special, and I think that bluegrass song originated in OpaLocka. (fact check needed)

I always thought they were the best looking locomotives.  So modern looking compared to steam units.

The Orange Blossom Special was a joint PRR/Seaboard Air Line train. You might be thinking of the Florida Special, which was an ACL train.

ACL had some really handsome 4-8-4s delivered to them in '38 by Baldwin, but Baldwin screwed up the balancing on them from the factory. ACL had terrible issues with them bouncing the drive wheels off the rails at high speeds and kinking their rails. ACL raised hell with Baldwin until they got it sorted out, and Baldwin did, but that pretty much turned ACL off from the steam locomotive. Baldwin tried to win them back with a fascinating Otto Kuhler-streamlined 4-4-4-4 Duplex with a vestibule cab and a 4-10-0 "centipede" tender, and the drawings by Kuhler even still exist, but ACL told them to take a hike and went and bought EMC E3s instead and retired the R-1 4-8-4s in 1951-1952. Don Ball Jr. laments in Portrait of the Rails that he never got a chance to get photos of the R-1s, which he thought were some of the best-looking steam locomotives in the South.

The proposed Otto Kuhler Duplex.

Atlantic Coast Line E6s under the PRR wires at Harrison, New Jersey, USA on President's Day, 1958. A freak snowstorm blew in on March 20th and crippled PRR's GG1 fleet, high winds and very low temperatures created a very fine snow that penetrated the intake vent filters of the GG1s and shorted them out, and so PRR scrambled and borrowed diesels from ACL for their passenger trains to get by until they could get the GG1s up and running.