Rolling footnotes to history
Union Pacific recently unveiled the first examples of its "
Heritage Series" of individual locomotives painted in styles reminiscent of various railroads it has absorbed. I'm no fan of the Yellow Borg, but I like the updated MoPac and WP colors and I'm sure they'll be a welcome change from the monotonous parade of
Armour Yellow. It'll be interesting to see how they update the paint schemes of other UP predecessors like the
MKT. I suspect they'll start with the Katy's most recent color scheme, the cheerful "John Deere"
green-and-yellow of the 1970s and 1980s, rather than the monotonous
red of the Deramus years or the flamboyant red-and-silver of the "
Texas Special" streamliner of the 1950s.
Added comment, 8/8: A poster on a railroad history listserv speculates that UP's motivation for this project may be to preserve their trademark ownership over the logos and color schemes of the predecessor railroads, in order to collect royalties from commercial model-railroad manufacturers and railroad-book publishers who wish to reproduce them.
Is such cynicism warranted? On the one hand, UP has demonstrated long-term corporate interest in historical preservation, as with the
UP Railroad Museum and their continuing
steam-locomotive program. On the other hand, they've been the most aggressive of all the major railroads about demanding royalties and permissions from railroad modellers and historians.
