CSX Transportation has readapted its traditional gold-and-blue ‘Dark Future’ paint scheme, doing away with the boxcar brackets that have been on all new deliveries and repaints since 2012. This time, the rendering features a small twist with the addition of the railroad’s website URL underneat the ‘X’ in the bottom righthand corner. Here, CSX AC4400CW No. 155 is pictured in Huntington, W.Va., awaiting re-entry to mainline service on Sept. 5, 2021. — Chase Gunnoe
Long live Chessie!
Why would they name the scheme “Dark Future”. Also, did they consult with Captain Obvious to determine that they needed the website address underneath the big letters. Lastly, I liked the Chessie scheme too.
Sad to see the Box Car Logo go, I liked that logo it fit CSX well. Would have been better if they went with a New Paint scheme like the B&O inspired scheme or something else.
The box car logo would be an oxymoron on business and passenger rolling stock.
“CSX” could have filled the void in the circle where the image of the Capitol dome was on the B&O inspired paint scheme applied to CSX’s business train locomotives.
What I always felt would have been really awesome are the Chessie System logo for the C, the Seaboard System logo for the S and the X on the end. That would go back to the original two components of CSX.
ANTHONY — Chessie System was my all-time favorite livery, by far. Living at the time in Detroit I saw a fair amount of it. I don’t remember the year, 1972 maybe, 1973 maybe, the livery was formally unveiled on my birthday, Septmeber 12.
I’m not much of a collector – one of my few railfan collectibles is a framed 1984 Chessie System calendar with of course that logo. (The year 1984 was years into CSX as a holding corporation, not yet operationally merged.) The illustrated cat on the calendar is almost identical – 99.9 percent resemblance – to the cat Chesapeake who lived with me at the time. At the time I told the lie that the calendar’s model actually was my cat — except that Chesapeake and her sister Ohio weren’t born until late May of 1983. Therefore Chessie would have been too young to pose as an adult for a 1984 calendar.
The Boxcar Logo was great!
Good riddance to the Boxcar Logo. If it had lasted a day that would have been a day too long.