Those beautiful headlamps

Along the way to loving all the narrow gauge engines as any steam fan should, I stumbled into Mexico’s narrow gauge and became addicted to one aspect of NdeM and all the associated lines. But I never got a detailed answer from an expert. So now I throw myself on the kindness of the rail fraternity and hope for an answer.

The headlights on all Mexican narrow gauge (and quite a few Mexico standard gauge engines as well) are clearly oversized compared with U.S. cousins. The faces of south of the border engines seem unique this way and by my sensibilities quite beautiful…I do not recall there being a clear discussion here of why this was, or whether those railroads had a clearly defined standard with rules and adopted measurements for the headlights….Were they all home made or supplied by Baldwin? Were the common designs that made central and south American engines slightly different the product of a particular designer, or was it on-the-fly?

If this has all been discussed before, I apologize and will gladly seek out the old thread.

BTW, among the reasons I am jealous and envious of John West is the time he got to spend in the yards and roundhouses near those engines. His pictures captivate me....DLR