John Bush Wrote:
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> The flying Rio Grande lettering was supposed
> to lean toward the front of the locomotive no
> matter which side of the locomotive it was on.
> That is the reason there were different stencils
> for each side.
Hi John & John & John, et al -
SFAIK, the only K-36 that had the "fireman's side" lettering applied to the engineer's side of the tender was #487. See [
ngdiscussion.net] for a photo of her in this garb as it appears on page 93 of Beebe & Clegg's '
Narrow Gauge in the Rockies' - the caption for which claims that she was "on the smokey end of the San Juan in the closing years of its operations." This would date the photo to 1950 at the latest,* but I vaguely remember reading that the wrong-side stencil was applied in the mid-1950's - and reading elsewhere that Beebe often 'played free and easy' with his photo captions** - so I'm assuming that the photo was taken somewhat later than 1950 but certainly prior to 1958 - the year the book was published.
There are photos of #4
97 with wrong-way tender lettering on pages 59 and 63 of Robart & Hereford's 'Rio Grande Narrow Gauge - The Final Years, Alamosa to Chama', so it's clear that there were at least two locomotives stenciled incorrectly during the final years of D&RGW narrow gauge operations.
***
I hereby pledge $100 to the C&TS "Correct Font Fund", and an additional $50 to help pay for one extra "fireman's-side" flying 'Cumbres & Toltec' logo for the engineer's side of #487's tender if this minor 'tip of the hat' to histöry is approved.
- Russ
* Yes, I know the San Juan ran until January, 1951 - but there's no snow on the ground in the photo
... IIRC, this photo was also published in
TRAINS, along with several other Shaughnessy photos of the D&RGW, so dating it shouldn't be a problem.
** Note that the photo is cropped just aft of the tender's cistern - not even the coupler shows - so there's no evidence at all that #487 was pulling the San Juan at the time. In my copy of '
The Age of Steam' there is at least one instance - possibly more - where a U.P. 4-6-6-4 (
NOT a 4-6
+6-4) Challenger is identified as a Big Boy (a 4-8-8-4,
NOT a 4-8
+8-4).
*** Some former employees of the D&RGW deny that this was an error on the part of workers in the shop, but rather that it was due to the extremely high winds southwest of Alamosa - coupled with the high rate of speed of westbound trains along that route - which gradually pushed the lettering backwards over several years.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2013 10:31PM by Russo Loco.