Subscribe to download
Great Northern U33C (Big Sky Blue)

"Great galloping goats! I've got to paint the whole GN railway Big Sky Blue. What a job!" --unnamed advertising character, 1967

In 1967, the Great Northern took a new direction in its aesthetics, replacing the iconic Empire Builder green-and-orange with the all-new Big Sky Blue. The work of Lippicott & Margulies, a New York design firm that also designed the Canadian National multimark, the Big Sky Blue was probably the biggest change any railroad had made to their liveries since the New Haven's McGinnis black-white-and-orange in the 1950s.

But it wasn't to be. As early as 1968, Trains magazine predicted the livery wouldn't survive the impending Burlington Northern merger, and it didn't. By 1977, every piece of rolling stock had been painted out of the colors. Only one locomotive carries it now: Great Northern 441, an ex-Santa Fe F45 refurbished as a luxury cabin at the Izaak Walton Inn in Essex, Montana.

Might not be as, again, iconic as the green-and-orange, but I have a soft spot for the BSB. I've seen a couple takes on it on the workshop already, but I felt like taking a crack at it myself, since the ones I've seen made the blue a little more vibrant than I see it in photos.