Personally, I never liked the diamond stacks applied to the K-28's by the D&RGW, and I was glad to see the D&SNG go back to the straight stacks. I prefer the Pullman green coach scheme myself. I lived near Hermosa much of the period from 1958 - 1964 as a child, and watching the D&RGW narrow gauge was the big deal in my life. It probably steered me toward a career in history.
Having said that, however....a few thoughts regarding the historical accuracy of the diamond stacks, bumblebee paint and yellow coaches. They are all histoically correct for the D&RGW. Regardless of how the railroad enthusiasts feel about it, railroads (common carriers, at least), are in business to make money and carry freight and passengers. The D&RGW management decided to get a new passenger paint scheme, and to back-date the first K-28 in 1950. They were trying to sell 'old west' to the tourists. Yes, I *know* it's fake, and so on, but the railroad decided to do this because they thought it would bring more passengers to ride the train. One might argue that the D&RGW wasn't alone in looking at brighter passenger paint schemes. Think SP Daylight, or UP Armour Yellow, which were getting a lot of coverage then. After trying out the yellow scheme on the Silverton, it was applied to much of the standard gauge passenger fleet. And much of the standard gauge coach fleet remained aspen leaf gold until the end of passenger operations.
The K-28's look odd with the diamond stacks, or the Ridgeway spark arrestors - but the D&RGW found the fake diamonds *were* better spark arrestors than the wire 'hockey pucks", and the D&SNG was very concerned about fire problems, so they opted for the Ridgeway design as a compromise. Considering last summer's problem, not an unreasonable fear, it would seem.
From my perspective, the historical reality is that the D&RGW chose to change its paint scheme on its passenger cars in the 1950's, and they chose to add phoney diamond stacks to the K-28's as a sop to the tourist trade. Yes, they are utterly different from the way ALCO built them, but those stacks *are* for better or worse, how the D&RGW ran the remaining K-28's for approximately twenty years. No matter how much I may have thought the yellow cars and diamond stacks were touristy, and weird, the D&RGW was running the railroad, not me - and they chose to make those changes. So I don't think I'd call the changes "unhistorical" as much as "unattractive." But, as Mike Trent has ably argued, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Before we dismiss the diamond stacks completely, let's look at a few more locomotive photos. Sumpter Valley No. 16, 17 (1915) and 18 (1916) were built by Baldwin with diamond stacks similar to those used on the C&S in the early 1900's. Two ALCO mikes, Nos. 101 - 102 (later 19 and 20) were delivered in 1920 with flattened diamond stacks . The SV later replaced all of them with Rushton stacks, an important item since the railroad burned wood until 1939.
For bigger mikes with diamond stacks, I submit the first Northern Pacific W class locomotives, which came with flat diamond stakcs from ALCO in 1904. After the NP re-eingineered the front ends, the first W''s got more normal short straight stacks.
Thanks for reading.
Charlie
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