Good morning all! The transition from black and yellow to "austerity" to Mandarin orange and white seems to have been a very fluid process. Do any of you know of the basic timeline for paint scheme changes on the Frisco? I am having a hard time nailing down a rough timeline. Thanks! John
I'll start on a deep dive in the archive tonight. A quick answer is The first few VO switchers were actually delivered in a blue and white or light gray scheme that resembled the Meteor paint scheme. They were later repainted black with yellow stripes. Roughly speaking, the simplified black and yellow started showing up in the late 1950s. There are several different versions of the simplified striping that can be found on the GP7s The Mandarin orange and white started in February or March of 1965 with U25B 802 rolling out of the Springfield shops as the first to wear the new scheme. This followed shortly after with a batch of GP35s delivered in orange and white. The Frisco experimented with diagonal orange stripes on the short hood for a while in the late 1960s. Only a handful of units received this treatment. That's the quick version. I'll pull up some archive pictures later tonight.
The Mandarin orange and white livery was based on the EMD GP35/DD35/GP35 demonstrator consist. On February 14 1965, the Frisco painted the U25B SLSF 802 into Mandarin orange and white. All subsequent locomotive deliveries arrived in that livery. During the spring of 1965, GE U25B 816 and EMD GP35 717 were the first units to arrive from GE and EMD in the new Mandarin orange and white. In the stack of stuff, I have a drawing, which has a date of 1962, that depicts the austerity or cigar band livery. I need to dig it up to confirm the date. The Frisco repainted the extant black and yellow units on an ad hoc basis. At the time of the Barely Nuth’n’ merger, the were no road or switch engines in black and yellow. During the summer of 1967, and with one passenger train still in operation, the Frisco painted 3 three E8As into the Mandarin orange and white livery.
I forgot earlier, but Mike Condren's website already has most of this information put together with example photographs. https://condrenrails.com/Frisco/Frisco_PaintShop.htm
