At the time of the BN-SF merger I wasn’t really in either railroads’ territory. On a trip out west in 1996 to New Mexico I did get to see some SF traffic in the mountains. SF painted units.

I was well aware of the new paint scheme that was coming. I remember the early names that railfans had for this, and they were not kind. Vomit Bonnet, Rainbow Warrior immediately come to mind. It did seem a bit shocking to me at first.

I really was looking forward to catching one in the wild though. For me, that didn’t happen until August, 1998. While hard at work in grad school at Mississippi State I still managed to get some railfanning in on occasion. Columbus, Mississippi offered a pretty good variety of railroads and traffic. So this was my first spotting of a pumpkin in the wild. Unit 2773, ex-ATSF GP39.

It looks like we now have a CPKC logo. Railfans are just waiting for a paint scheme. But given the complexity of mergers we probably won’t start to see repainting for a good year or two out.