Steam & Excursion > Back When It Was All New and Colorful

I have always liked the days of old, when railroading was new and colorful.

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Beautiful, but can you imagine how much work it took to keep it painted and polished up that way ?   No wonder the railroads eventually gravitated to all black.  I have a model of a "Reno" somewhere that probably had a similar colorful paint job at one time.  This kind of inspires me to dig it out and paint it.

Craig Hanson
Vay, Idaho

Based on my research, Hinkley locos were well built, but there was nothing noteworthy about them as to inventions or new ideas.

Victor Baird

Why get rid of red drivers?    Too much work to keep clean?  Much of the rest of the world kept red.

Maybe they gave that up about the time they stopped using ornate brass on the locomotives and Russian Iron"*** for the boiler lagging. And eventually the locos were no longer personalized with the engines not being assigned to particular engineers  Before that, the engine crew was required to keep their engine clean and polished without extra pay. But often the engineer saw that his fireman did all that as he figured he had already paid his dues! (And if the engineer chewed tobacco, it was also the fireman's job to keep the deck clear of the tobacco juice!) There were also poor, young souls that hung around the yards, who helped out with the process of cleaning and polishing the engines, and loading wood, WITHOUT PAY, hoping to someday get hired on as a firemen. (Of course it was many a young man's dream to be a locomotive engineer.)

My research is based the period mostly right after the civil war and gleaned mostly from printed testimony from folks who were there.

***If you want to go down a rabbit hole, do some research on "Russian Iron" It was an extensive process, made in other places including Russia and wasn't always blue or green as it is often depicted. 
Victor Baird

Tominde Wrote:
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> Why get rid of red drivers?    Too much work to
> keep clean?  Much of the rest of the world kept
> red.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/25 13:39 by wabash2800.

Tominde Wrote:
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> Why get rid of red drivers?

Likely to prevent paint (red or any other color) from hiding cracks during inspections.