Conrail blue - where did it come from?

I recenty noticed a Scottish steamer in bright blue with "CR" for Caledonian Railway. Was this the inspiration for CR as in Conrail blue?

The story I got when researching it a year ago was management consultants came up with the idea as part of the branding exercise... they wanted a complete break from public image of the predecessor roads. There's also a school of thought that the blue was used to reinforce the “bluepint to profitability” slogan being used internally.

The original plan and early schemes went with an iron oxide brown, but that was deemed to be too close to PRR's colors. The shade of blue selected was something that hadn't been used by anyone else yet.

The reason for researching... we have Fallen Flag themes at Trainsim.com for members to choose, in addition to a rotating theme that changes three times a day. Quality Blue is in memory of Dave Edwards, one of our longtime moderators who passed away in 2023.

That's about it; the official corporate attitude at the time was that the world began on April 1, 1976 and anything prior to that was unhistory. (In any case, anything but red or green.) I think it's safe to say that none of the consultants ever heard of the Caledonian Railway, which was merged out of existence in 1923 -- and I think used a different shade of blue.

Which reminds me: this would probably belong in Worldwide Railfan, but did the UK have any observance of the anniversary of the Grouping which formed the four British railway companies which existed from 1923 until the 1948 nationalization?