KCS passenger diesels and cars wore variations of red, yellow, and Brunswick green from the 1940s into the late 1960s (freight units wore red and black, and switchers were all black), when an all-white scheme was adopted for passenger and freight locomotives. Only two E-series passenger diesels were repainted white, and the cars kept their historic colors until KCS quit all passenger service in 1969. Gray replaced white as the basic diesel color beginning in 1989.
KCS’s business cars always retained the historic colors, and the F units that KCS boss Mike Haverty brought in to pull the expanded fleet in 1996 were painted to match them (Brunswick green is dominant, vs. yellow on the old E units). When passenger service was re-introduced in 2001 on KCS’s newly acquired Panama Canal Railway, the cars and the ex-Amtrak F40’s purchased for it were painted in the historic passenger colors, and KCS also applied the livery to an F unit donated in 2006 to the Union Station museum in Kansas City.
