Railworks America

A little something I've been working on in secret.

Funny when I started this one I honestly didn't think it was gonna get done (that's why I kept it secret) but, here it is, finished and on it's way to Hawk:



That's an ICG GP9 with auto numbering and 200 unique road numbers taken from the Illinois Central GP9 roster. Should be more than enough I reckon.

Also, thank you to buzz456 for helping me with the research on this one.

Very sharp. These used to run by my house many years ago.
Olympia Fields, Il. along the CN mainline (once the Illinois Central)

Why an Illinois Central Gulf?
I still don't understand how one can spoil a company name by adding such a short word.
Don't like that name.

Your repaint looks really nice, though.

A merger between The Illinois Central and The Gulf Mobile & Ohio in the 70's
It lated only a few years, but they painted many loco's and rolling stock this way.
Still see a few ICG stock around.

Think 'Gulf of Mexico'.

micaelcorleone wrote:Why an Illinois Central Gulf?
I still don't understand how one can spoil a company name by adding such a short word.
Don't like that name.

Your repaint looks really nice, though.

I chose to do this one because I just liked the way it looked and wanted to give it a shot. But yeah Illinois Central Gulf doesn't quite sound right together. Maybe that's one of the reasons they eventually dropped the Gulf and became Illinois Central again.

And thank you!

If I'm not mistaken, ICG had another paint scheme for their locos:



Can anyone confirm if they had GP9s painted like this?

Nice work. I looked but i couldnt find none in that scheme but i did find the all black GP9 with the green logo on it. For ICG

ATSF3814,
I'm sure I saw a picture of that paint scheme when I was looking around for the numbers. I'll try to find it again. We have some loco running around here on the locals with the black paint job on it. (now CN). I'll try to hunt it down and see what it is. Our locals here have a mix of SOO, GT, and IC stuff. Never see a CN paint except on the mainline trains.

Buzz

The IC went through about 4-5 different color schemes in a 15 year period The original paint was the all black with green diamond, then they went to the orange & white, then afer the GM&O merger they just added the word gulf to the existing Illinois Central lettering, which during that time made for some colorful lashups. In this example http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=2629418 you have IC orange & white, GM&O red & a black IC bringing up the rear. & in this photo you have the orange & white, black, grey & orange bringing up the rear http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=2397546 The grey & orange ICG was used after the units went through rebuild so not that many units got that color mostly rebuilt SD20's GP10's & SW13 switchers. after it was reorganized they dropped the gulf name completely again becoming straight Illinois Central & also sold off most of the ex-GM&O trackage.

Concur. It looks like none of the GP9's were done in that color scheme.

Buzz

Very sharp Thanks !

Looks good. I always thought the ICG was unique especially with their GP9 rebuild program.

I always liked the ICG's Orange and White paint scheme. One of my favorite class of locomotives was the ICG's Paduch GP10 rebuilds.


But then again, just about all units looked good in the ICG Orange & White scheme





Keep up the great work

Regards,
Rich S.

Good job finding the correct tint for the IC orange color! That has always plagued my repaints in the past, either too orange or too red. One thing I should bring to your attention, though, is that the logo on the front does not correctly match the name...

The logo you have on the nose is called the "split-rail" logo and was in use from 1968-1972 under the "new" IC image.
By close inspection of the logo, one can see that by splitting the rail in half and offsetting the dot above, the logo effectively says "IC".

The logo changed after the "Gulf" was added to the end of the name. The rail was fused back together and the dot was centered during the three ICG paint-schemes.


In addition to the logo change, the orange paint on the long hood came up higher on the ICG units than the original IC paintjob. I always figured that the separating line was even with the handrails on an IC unit, and about a foot above them for the ICG units. This may not have been standard, but I've seen this enough to notice it.

I don't recall any of the GP9s to have been painted in the 1979 orange and grey, or the short-lived orange "pumpkin" schemes.

Regardless, I think the repaint is great and the number fonts look correct, which I have also found to be challenging!

Hmm thanks for pointing that out. I don't know much about IC history so I just assumed that was the right logo. This is the picture I worked off of for this repaint:



I can update it with the other logo if you guys want.