Was BN around early enough to have passenger service?

I've seen the E's with the hockey stick livery and even a few
green w/ white stripe passenger cars but always wondered if in fact the BN actually had ran a passenger service outside of office car specials and commuter service in and around Chicago.

How many passenger cars recieved a coat of cascade green and did any actually serve under BN prior to transfer to Amtrak? Did a matched consist of cascade engines and passenger cars ever get utilized?

Here's an interesting photo recently posted on RP which finally got me to asking this long time curiousity.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=168748

/Mitch

The short answer is yes... BN was created in March of 1970, over a year before Amtrak took over most long-distance passenger service in the US, and continued to operate a number of the long-distance trains established by its predecessor railroads, GN, CB&Q, NP, and SP&S. I don't recall ever seeing a picture of a complete train in matching cascade green and white unless it was a publicity shot or a business car train.

Until Amtrak, BN continued to operate such trains as the North Coast Limited, Empire Builder, Nebraska Zephyr, Twin Cities Zephyr, Denver Zephyr, and California Service, which replaced the California Zephyr when WP dropped out of its operation and it was discontinued.

While in the Amtrak era you could probably count on one hand the number of cars BN re-painted into the cascade green scheme. I think only one dome car got re-painted (it had the hockey stick scheme, at least on one side). Possibly for some of the short, local passenger trains BN still had a few of pre-Amtrak they used a matched BN set, but never for the long-distance trains: only one dome was re-painted, and as far as I know none of the obs cars or baggage cars were ever re-painted.

If you see a picture of a matched trainset in cascade green it is probably of a business train before they re-painted it into the blue and creme in the 1980s.

Some coaches did make it into the cascade green, as I can recall them running in New Jersey after BN sold them off. I think some coaches pre-merger were actually painted in the cascade green as well - for example, you may see pictures of a car in green and white with a GN logo on it.

One interesting aspect of passenger trains in the BN era was that the one (I think) dome owned by SP&S - and painted in the NCL colors - was actually re-painted for SP&S about the time of the merger. Maybe BN had some corporate moves in mind for their money-losing passenger trains had Amtrak not taken over.

I am sure I don't have everything above correct, so please post corrections/clarifications.

Chris .