RailAmerica And The San Joaquin Valley Railroad

RailAmerica's red, white, and blue color scheme grew on me, especially after I started railfanning the San Joaquin Valley Railroad. Here's a pair of GP38s on the Buttonwillow branch:

The SJVR's roster isn't well covered by HO models, and none of those that exist have been offered in SJVR paint. However, variations of RailAmerica red, white, and blue sublettered for other RailAmerica properties have been offered on models from time to time, most recently by Bachmann with a currently available GP38-2 sublettered for Toledo, Peoria & Western:

The actual TP&W 3821 is a GP38, not a GP38-2 -- most of the RailAmerica ex RailTex locos in the 3800 series are straight 38s. My view is that the RailAmerica red, white, and blue scheme is hard to paint, so I'm OK with getting the Bachmann loco and not looking at it too hard, especially given the Bachmann's very reasonable price from the web.

Earlier, a third-party painter brought out an Atlas high hood GP38 painted for the one New England Central high hood unit. Very few NECR units got RailAmerica paint, but this one had it:

I'm fond of NECR, since I used to railfan it in a past life when it was the Central Vermont.

Athearn RTR brought out a variation on RailAmerica paint with a Central Railroad of Indiana GP50:

I'm up in the air over whether to reletter the TP&W sublettering on the Bachmann model for one of the Minnesota Northern or Esquimalt & Nanaimo GP38s running on the SJVR, like this one:

There are enough differences in the prototype versions of the RailAmerica scheme between the TP&W locos and the ones on the SJVR that just changing the lettering wouldn't be enough.

I'll have more to say about the San Joaquin Valley and its modeling potential in subsequent posts.