Green Cargo Bandits

Decaling in large scale.









Green Gargo was spun of from Swedish State railroad (SJ) to handle freight service over the the swedish network.

In 2003 the Green Gargo went for redecaling or stenciling their equipment. First to go was the SJ markings on the freightcars, which went fairly fast. To make headlines, CG repainted a few of the Rc.s and few freight cars to their current green scheme. But during the fall of 2002, not including the restencilzed cars, everything looked just like before. Perhaps, this was to profilite their corporate image more clear from the now financely embarassed SJ, which now are serving the majority of the Swedish network only in passenger service.








Banditazion, the term orginates to SOO Line in USA when they took over Milwaukee Road and painted roughly black on anything that showed former ownership, now adays this seem to have become a term of most redecalling jobs on railroading. CG was not first banditizer in Sweden, The SJ owned company TGOJ, took over a number of former SJ T43.s and before repainting them to their current light greeen and dark blue scheme they added a white decal pretty roughly on the SJ orange and blue, there are still quite a few of them running in Sweden, used as leasing power for the regional lines and as heavy industrial switchers.

As the the railroad policy in Sweden, changed to confirm the outlines of transportation policy in European Union, number of companies and SJ bid for the service on most mainlines. As the new companies did not have money to upfront for own purchases, they leased equipment from SJ, and redecaled to their corporate image. Some companies repainted their EMU.s, DMU.s and the passenger cars, but the most cases the engines remained in SJ liveries. The only exception so far is Tågkompaniet AB that has repainted a couple of their RC.s in green before they decided to repaint their equipment in the new red scheme, engines and the passenger cars.






Green Cargo has made a pretty good job on the unrepainted blue engines of Rc1, Rc2, Rm and Rc4.s As they have been concentrating their efforts to repaint first the units still carring the orginal orange scheme the redecalling job looks like real bandits, it is sloppy. But as the bulk of the Blue units are fairly recently repainted, and not unlikely beeing repainted within few years, the decalling looks quite good.

T44.s and V5.s mostly used in yard service and insustrial switching duties are also being now redecaled. The SJ, had plced their logos on the cabsides and on the fronts of the hoods, CG decided at least temporary to only place the decal only on cabsides and the logos on the hoods have been painted over in same blue color as the background. One of theings herited on Green Gargo from SJ is adding a red diagonal stripe on the side of the engine to indicate that the engine can used by remote controll, to elimate the switching crews to minimum, just the engineer. There are now quite a few Rc.s in green but so far only one T44 is repainted but is used on any ocation that attracts media.

Webdesign & Photos:Ollie Ahokas, e-mail: Olliehokas@.yahoo.se.