The Wisconsin and Southern’s Paint Facility in Horicon, Wisconsin, has just finished painting the first Wisconsin Central EMD F45 No. 6650. A contest was run internally on the railroad to come up with a “special” image for these cowled EMDs that they recently acquired, but a single contestant’s idea wasn’t chosen. Instead, design features from several winners was cherry-picked and a composite image was born, and this was the result. Like it or not, a F45 in fresh, dripping paint in the mid-’90s was still a good thing (note that some masking tape was still on the nose). WC bought 6 F45s and 1 FP45 from the Santa Fe in 1994-95; WC No. 6650 was former Santa Fe No. 5955.
