Diesel Locomotives >    Up | Diesel Class | Paint Schemes
Diesel Paint Schemes>   Tangerine & Blue | Green & Yellow

There were essentially five overlapping periods of diesel paint schemes on the CNJ. The variations apply almost entirely to the freight and passenger road switchers as yard switchers were basically painted dark green throughout the diesel period of the CNJ (basically 1940 - 1976).

In this brief summary of CNJ diesel paint schemes I will work through chronologically and will look into some of the oddities of interest to the prototype modeller. The dates given are the dates that locomotives were being painted in the respective paint schemes. Clearly many lasted much longer - for example, RS3 #1552 stayed in Period 2 paint scheme though until 1976.

Period 1: 1946 - 1950    Tangerine and Blue
Period 2: 1950 - 1962    Green and Yellow
Period 3: 1962 - 1969    Austerity Green    - to be done
Period 4: 1969 - 1972    Blue and yellow    - to be done
Period 5: 1972 - 1976    Red Barron    - to be done

This diagram shows the duration of the paint schemes on different classes of diesel.

key:  S - switcher;  F - freight,  P - passenger,  D - diesels 

This diagram has been assembled from several book sources - in particular "Jersey Central Diesels" by Gerard Bernet, and  "Jersey Central Lines In Color, Volumes 2 & 3".

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Last modified: January 2018