Ridgefield Connecticut USA - Today, 15 Jun 2023, is the last day employees of the recently merged Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern (CPKC) can vote to select one of five new locomotive paint schemes proposed by CPKC management.
 
In the meantime, acclaimed rail industrial designer Cesar Vergara has come up with a pattern whose three iterations are keyed to the flag colors of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
 
After posting the drawings on his Linked In page last week, Vergara tells Trains News Wire he did it "at his own expense and risk."
 
Vergara, a Swedish-trained native of Mexico who joined Amtrak in 1990, played a lead role on the company's in-house design team that came up with the "Pepsi Can" red, white, and blue striping for General Electric’s P32-8BWH locomotives, the elevated fins on Amtrak Cascades Series VI Talgo trainsets, and a variety of other contributions.
 
He left Amtrak in 1999.
 
Some of his subsequent accomplishments are displayed on the Vergara Studio company website.
 
A Talgo Bistro car featuring his interior design was recently rescued from being scrapped.
 
CPKC appears set on a single paint scheme to be applied to all locomotives.
 
But an intriguing aspect of Vergara’s proposal is that different color variations of the same design could parade through the three host countries in the same way that heritage units spice up otherwise similar locomotive consists.
 
Author unknown.