The class was also the first member of the BB Alsthom family which also includes 146 BB 8500 (some rebuilt as class BB 88500 or BB 8700), 105 BB 17000, 13 BB 20200 and 194 BB 25500. Liveries The BB 16500s carried, during their careers, a great variety of liveries, some concerning only a few locomotives, sometimes very temporarily. The first BB 16500s left the factory were uniformly green, without any decoration. The next batch were put into service in a light bluish green livery with a "Celtic green" band at the bottom of the body but the light bluish green was quickly replaced with a darker shade. In 1970-71, and like their cousins the BB 8500 , BB 17000 and BB 25500, they adopted a dark green colour enhanced with white stripes on the sides, framing the ventilation louvres, themselves painted in dark grey, a colour repeated on the fronts in the form of "moustaches". The reporting numbers were daffodil yellow. BB 16595 and BB 16625, withdrawn on 26 March 26, 2002 and 15 December 2003, were the last locomotives to have kept this livery until the end of their career. The "concrete" livery, grey with orange bands, was used on a large number of SNCF engines from the 1980s, including 278 BB 16500s. On an experimental basis, BB 16604 and BB 16789 were repainted between 1992 and 1998 with the "Arzens livery", composed of grey and "havana brown" for one, and grey and "garrigue green" for the other, with orange moustaches. Though not extended to any more BB 16500s, this livery was also successfully applied to many BB 9400s. The five BB 16500s of the "dromedary trains", assigned to the TER Picardie, were painted in concrete grey with front faces and the frame of the shutters in "parrot green". Seven of the 156 machines dedicated to the freight sector received, in the early 2000s, a livery of green, grey and white arranged in a "Neapolitan slice". BB 16583, withdrawn on 8 October 2009, is the only one to have worn the "Île-de-France" livery, which was much more common among BB 17000s. Career Rise and Climax Deliveries of BB 16500s commenced on 25 July 1958 with BB 16501, assigned to the Strasbourg depot, and ended on 26 November 1964 with BB 16794, commissioned at Paris-La Chapelle. The first locomotives were used in 1958 on the Luxembourg – Metz –