New England Central In WRJ, VT

I was in White River Jct. the day after Thanksgiving and there was a NECR frieght picking up a string of cars. This was around 3:00 in the afternoon and the power was headed south.

I noticed on the sides of each of the three diesels that NECR is a RailTex company. Now I thought that NECR was purchased by another company, the name escapes me now, from RailTex several years ago. Did RailTex repurchase the NECR or are the new owners just to lazy to remove the previous owners name? All three were in their original blue and yellow scheme.

Rail America purchased RailTex several years back. The motive power is very slowly being painted into Rail America colors. Erasing the "RailTex" branding is apparently a low priority.
A sister railroad, Connecticut Southern, has had perhaps a dozen locos assigned to it over the past 10 years but none were ever given a specific Connecticut Southern scheme, just sub lettered (reporting marks) for the most part, although a couple of proposed schemes were drawn up.

Are Rail America's colors a red, white and blue scheme and aren't all of the RR's they own painted the same? I remember seeing this scheme a few years back and really wasn't that impressed with it. I will miss the distinctive blue and yellow of the NECR. In fact one of the locomotives I saw this week still had the "1995 Shortline of the Year" moniker on it.

The NECR's color scheme is the blue/gold. Although NECR is owned by RailAmerica, they have their own scheme. Problem right now is a lot of lease power is on the RR, especially the northern (VT) end and that's why there's a mix of CR, BN, and CN paint. The RailAmerica unit (painted red/silver/blue) was probably a "company" unit that became assigned to NECR but not painted in the NECR colors yet. I guess at this point their main concern is having enough power to run the trains, rather than what the locomotives look like, paint-wise.

-Jay H.

And now RailAmerica has been purchased by another company, Fortress Investment Group. This is more an investment banking company rather than an operating company, so it will be interesting to see what happens next.