Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Holiday Greetings by NS and CSX

Received the following via email from a Conrail fan.

Different. I like the animated nighttime train-in-the-snow graphic at the very end of the NS effort. And yes, those are snowflakes that begin falling all around the train, though my aging eyes at FIRST thought they were little white dollar signs showering the right-of-way (you can make them 'drift' left or right by moving your cursor backand forth across the center of the frame -- only TheThoroughbred of Transportation puts YOU in control ofthe weather!).

http://www.nscorp.com:80/nscorphtml/holiday/index.html

My 'wish' was for NS to use more Conrail Blue in their greetings and, well, this may be the ONLY time you will ever see the head of Topper the Horse appear in a Conrail BLUE NS logo! You aren't likely to ever see the throttle of an NS mixed-freight train being set at 100 mph again, either. And, finally, is that REALLY a Southern Railway unit, running long hood-forward, on the wrapping paper at the very beginning?

The CSX 'holliday greeting' on their home page is here:

http://www.csx.com/

Note the occasional large, passing snowflake made up of two different 'scales' of locomotive silhouettes. There does not appear to be a number board/headlight overhangin front of the cab: must be a former WM chop-nosed Geep! The dark blue in the CSX nighttime scene is obviously of C&O/B&O derivation, but the "OUR VISION" header is, to my eyes, lettered in Conrail Blue...