Hello all,
I rarely post on the forum, and usually it's to ask a question or two. In this case however maybe I can add a little information to the discussion.
I searched through what pictures I could find of 375, and I have not found any pictures I can definitively say reveal a tri-color herald.
However, I remembered seeing at least one picture that I feel shows a tri-color herald on a narrow gauge locomotive, and so I went searching again. I need to do a little more searching, but I did come up with one picture I feel is pretty definitive. I would post it on here, but I don't know whether it's proper to do so as it is part of the Dorman collection. If it's okay to post a picture from on there I can get it and post it, or someone else can do so.
The specific picture is number RD114-097 in the Dorman collection. It is a picture of 477, in Durango in the winter. If one were to go to the Dorman collection on the C&TS site, view the album with 477 in it, and zoom in on that particular picture, it seems to leave little doubt that at least one engine on the narrow gauge did indeed wear the tri-color herald at one time. The contrast between the parts of the herald is too great to me to be a coincidence. And unlike the debates about green boilers in black and white photography, where the jacket is not on the same plane as the areas it is being compared to, the different parts of the herald are on the same flat section of the tender, meaning light is reflecting off them in the same manner, and which means that all things being equal, if the herald is only black and white and not tri-color, the shades of black in the photograph should be the same across the herald.
I realize it is an inconvenience to describe all of this and not post the picture. Hopefully someone else on here can enlarge the herald in this particular picture and post it here.
In addition to this information, there was a discussion long ago on here where someone gave their first-hand experiences with a tri-color herald.
[
ngdiscussion.net]
As part of a larger, very heated thread, John Coker gives first-hand information of finding a tri-color herald on a tender. Take that thread for what you will.
I have no doubt that the discussion will continue or a long time as to the use of these heralds on the narrow gauge. And that is completely fine. It is a great way for us all to learn. My personal feeling on the matter, however, is that yes, the tri-color herald was used on the narrow gauge, though I don't feel it was used universally, and may in fact have only been used on occasion as a particular painter saw fit.
Thank you.
