Meridian & Bigbee 5297cf Evans Box Cars -Weathering and a Study in Contrast

I photographed a freshly-painted Meridian and Bigbee 50' 5277cf Evans exterior-post sliding-door box car on CSX in New Orleans in September of 1995. It was a bright robin's-egg blue:

MB #5209 50' Evans 5297cf box car westbound on CSX along Almonaster Ave NOLA 09-11-1995

Fourteen years later my then-fiancee, now wife, and I were returned from a trip to Fort Walton Beach, Florida. We cam through Montgomery on the way back and I persuaded her to let us go by the CSX yard there. This was her first railfan adventure (of many) and while there we spotted this Meridian and Bigbee rust bucket. It was only later when I scanned the car above that I realized that no only were they siblings, but indeed were sequential siblings. What the ravages of time had done to the paint job were impressive:

I can't tell what color this used to be; it may be that the paint under all of that rust is the original 1970s NRUC blue from its Peninsula Terminal days. Regardless, the difference between #5209 and #5210 could not be more stark.

Painting a pair of the Exactrail 5277cf Evans cars for these and running them in the same train would be quite a layout head-turner.