-How quickly were the GN, CB&Q, etc. liveries painted over? The first year or so? Early '80s? Or still in use right up to the BNSF merger?
Freight cars can still be found in the various schemes, but locomotives are a different story.
The last:
CB&Q black bird was an NW2 repainted Sept. 11, 1976.
CB&Q chinese red was GP9 repainted December 29, 1976.
CB&Q Silver was June 1978.
GN Empire Builder orange was an SW1200 repainted May 10, 1977.
GN Simplified orange was an SW1, repainted June 10, 1977.
GN big sky blue was an NW2 494 repainted May 23, 1977.
NP dark green pine tree was an F7A repainted April 1, 1977.
NP Lowey Green was F9A #9802 repainted Feb. 25, 1977.
NP canoe is an intersting story. Originally RS-3 #4064 was the last unit repainted into BN colors on Aug 24, 1977. BUT RS-3 #4082 had been painted to BN, but was repainted back into the Canoe scheme May 26, 1978 in order to re-create a grade crossing accident. Three months later it went to scrap in brand new shiny NP paint.
SP&S cream was RS3 #4064 repainted August 24, 1977.
BNML orange was a GP7 repainted April 29, 1977.
BN mineral red was an F7A repainted July 12, 1976.
CB&Q BN experimental scheme was U23C repainted Aug 27, 1976.
They had just basically finished all this and then the FRISCO merger happened on November 1980 and the repainting started all over again.
-The only BN livery & logo I know of is the green & black w/ white stripes + the loco in my avatar, as below. Did they really stick with this for 20+ years or were there other designs used?
They had a few, but for until the Executive Scheme came out the basic scheme was the same. There were many variation to the cascade green and black scheme. Mostly on where white stripes, numbers, and logos were applied.
-What type of consist would you typically see a BN freight train pulling? All a specific type of car? Mixed? How long and how many engines?
There are as many of those as there are books to describe them... I've seen as many as 8 locos on the point of a train. Coal trains used to come through Denver with three loco's on the point, two in the middle, and three at the rear. I even saw the SD40-2 set with the monster fuel tank car between them one night here in Denver. A bit later there was a train with an NP caboose on the end. If it had not been 1:00 a.m. on a work day I would have chased it to daylight and gotten some pictures.
