Eastern Railroad Discussion > Who Knew: Rules wrt depicting American flag on trains

Interesting Sunday Boston Globe article about the T's application of American flags to its new locomotives - some observers think the flag is displayed backward on the engineer side. Apparently there are rules for such depictions, though.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/04/19/american-flags-commuter-rail-locomotives-prompt-second-glances/PTZB155R8CzUNBEoNWW9kJ/story.html

Of course, unlike an airliner, the T's locomotives will spend half their lives running in reverse pushing trains in-bound to Boston meaning the flag won't always be facing the right way.

Pan Am has the same challenge on its rebuilt SD40/SD45 units.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/14 08:54 by JPB.

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Or, for me on my uniform: "The Stars always lead into battle".

Rob B.

Just an aside, the American flag began appearing on Guilford locomotives just forward of the cab window, as they were repainted, in the fall of 2001 as a patriotic response to 9/11.
By 2006, it had become a standard part of a Guilford repaint, and carried over to the Pan Am era. The first 2, 505 and 511, kept the flag on the cab. Early "dip blue" repaints, 506 and a few other widecabs, had a larger flag applied to the side of the wide cab. That placement would have looked quite awkward on a standard cabbed unit, and so the larger flag was retained, but placed aft under the radiators. The practice continues today on all Pan Am paint jobs.

While I personally liked the flags much better on the cab, its a nice touch and I appreciate both the origins and the continuation of the application. Pan Am is also not the only northeastern railroad to apply flags to its locomotives, recent New Brunswick Southern paint jobs have had an American flag on the nose, and Canadian flag on on the box under the front walk, with the flags swapping spots on the other side of the locomotive.

This is also not the first time Pan Am has had difficulty with the whole "bi-directional operation of locomotives, while airplanes operate 1 way" thing. The first "blue dips" had "Pan Am Railways" in the wind swept font currently used. Both sides had font italicised towards the rear. This of course looked goofy when the unit was running lhf, or when multiple units were running mu'd facing opposite directions. So they wisely made the correction to use standard italisiced on both sides, eng. leans forward "into the wind" and cond. side leans backwards "wind swept".

Sorry to drag so far out of the way...

nkp746 Wrote:
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> Or, for me on my uniform: "The Stars always lead
> into battle".

Like any flag on a moving pole, half of those that see it will be seeing it "backwards".

Nearly every locomotive that has ever had a flag decal on it has flown it backwards half the time.

On the same topic: three years ago a neighbor displayed the flag hung vertically. I pointed out to him the the star field must be in the upper left, not upper right as he had done. He subsequently corrected his display.
...Lorenzo

They didnt get mad at this???

UP: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1653438



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/14 09:41 by judahrice.