Tricolor Heralds and Green Boilers on the D&RGW K-37's. The Definitive Proofs.

It has come to my attention during this year's National Narrow Gauge Convention and after interacting with so many people while working on D&RGW #491 that there are still people who vehemently believe that the D&RGW never had tricolor heralds or green boiler jackets on the narrow gauge. This post is to back up all of the claims made by the Colorado Railroad Museum, the crew that restored, has worked, and currently works on #491 with definitive evidence.

Something to keep in mind before proceeding:
Prior to the restoration really ramping up on the locomotive, it needed a considerable amount of money to complete as is the case with all steam locomotive restorations. To get some of this money, #491 had an application submitted to the State Historical Fund to compete for grants, #491 ultimately beat out the competition and the State Historical Fund granted large amounts of money to help complete the restoration of #491. However, with that grant money also came the colossal microscope that is the State Historic Preservation Office (referred to as "office" from here on). Every single minuscule piece of work done to the locomotive during the grants were required to be photographed and sent to the office for inspection, that is, if an officer wasn't at the museum inspecting the work for themselves. If anything was done to the locomotive that the office deemed unhistorical or unable to be proven historically, they would not allow it to be done to #491. Everything done to this locomotive and tender was the result of hours upon weeks of the crew, led by the then Curator Of Rolling Stock, Mike Spera, digging through all the historic records, letters, books, and anything and everything pertaining to the K-37 class locomotives. Several hundreds of pictures were studied for hours on end until monumental headaches and bloodshot eyes forced sleep into the brain. With that being said, I hope the rest of this write-up will also help shed some unwanted clouds from the amazing work done by the incredible crew of the Colorado Railroad Museum to this beautiful locomotive.

Photo credit: Erik C. Lindgren

The Tender
During the restoration of D&RGW #491, it was decided to back-date the locomotive and tender to their 1935 appearances as shown here:

Photo credit: Otto Perry
This meant carefully sandblasting the old "Flying Grande" off of the tender. I emphasize carefully. During this procedure, a couple of paramount discoveries were made:

1. The D&RGW never really bothered with removing old paint, instead, they opted to paint over basically everything (probably a time and money saving practice). This left several layers of all sorts of heralds and colors to be unveiled during the sandblasting process. Here is the major discovery of the tricolor herald that was actually applied by the D&RGW, this is where the pigments for the colors used on the tricolor herald that the museum painted on were taken from.

Photo credit: Mike Spera


Photo credit: Mark Huber


Photo credit: Mark Huber
As you can clearly see, there is blue inside the herald as well as white and red if you look closely (the macro shots show the red much better). The yellow also seen in the photo is a zinc chromate primer that the D&RGW used to use. The macro shots also display the different layers of the paints very well.

2. The tricolor herald that was found was not the iteration that had "RIO GRANDE" in the outer ring, "ROYAL GORGE - MOFFAT TUNNEL" in the center circle, and "SCENIC LINE OF THE WORLD" in the bottom banner. Instead, the iteration that was found on the tender had the following:
- "D&RGW R R" in the other ring.
- "ROYAL GORGE ROUTE" in the center circle.
- "SCENIC LINE" in the bottom banner.
The stencil for the "Royal Gorge Route" herald was then held up to the original tricolor herald on the tender and they lined up perfectly.
If one looks closely the "INE" from "SCENIC LINE" on the bottom right side of the banner as well as the last "R" from "D&RGW RR" on the outer ring can be seen (this was much clearer in person):

Photo credit: Dusty Thomson

Here is volunteer Dusty Thomson holding up the "Royal Gorge Route" herald stencil to the tricolor herald discovered on the tender (the two lined up perfectly):

Photo credit: Dusty Thomson

3. Several iterations of the heralds that the D&RGW used were discovered underneath layers of old paint, this helped to lend the exact dimensions, size, location, letter color, and font used by the D&RGW (location wasn't too important to the Rio Grande apparently as the herald's location on the other side was way off of where this one was).

Photo credit: Mike Spera

4. Aluminum leaf was found to be the material used to letter the old "Denver and Rio Grande Western" just below the tricolor herald.

Photo credit: Dusty Thomson


Photo credit: Dusty Thomson

Here is a physical fleck of the aluminum leaf:

Photo credit: Mark Huber
This points to the fact that the D&RGW really applied their best and finest liveries to these locomotives.

5. The very bottom layer of paint, just before bare metal was hit, the "Baldwin Green" color was discovered. This is the color that Baldwin Locomotive Works would often deliver their engines with. Despite the color having "Green" in the name, it was closer to an olive-brown shade, funny how these railway colors get their names. This color was from when the tender was pulled behind the standard gauge, 1902 Baldwin-built C-41, instead of the narrow gauge, 1928 Colorado-built K-37 that the C-41 would later be rebuilt into.

Photo credit: Mike Spera

This green is the same color, give or take over 100 years underneath other paints, that the Baldwin Locomotive Works #60,000 at The Franklin Institute in Pennsylvania is painted.

Photo credit: Wally Gobetz on Flikr
This color was exceptionally tough to remove, even after so many years.

#6. Faint lettering of #491, #494, and #499 were uncovered on the back of the tender, leading to believe that the tender was swapped between several of the K-37's during its working life. No standard gauge numbers were found on the tender after those numbers were removed, only the "Baldwin Green." This was because during the time that the D&RGW were hand-picking the C-41's to take the boilers from to use on the K-37's, they didn't have their numbers painted on the backs of their tenders.

Photo credit: Mike Spera

Here's C-41 #1126 in 1922, this is the C-41 whose boiler was chosen to make K-37 #491, and the tender is possibly the same tender behind #491 today as well (since it is known that the K-37 tenders moved around between locomotives it is possible that #1126's tender is with another K-37 or even possibly scrapped with one of the two K-37's scrapped, #490 and #496). Notice the large but faint and fading 1126 on the side of the tender.

Photo credit: Otto Perry and Denver Public Libraries

After the culmination of all these discoveries, this tricolor herald was the result (hand painted by railroad artist, John Coker):

Photo credit: Mike Spera


Photo credit: Mike Spera

Keep in mind that the colors for the herald discovered during sandblasting were the same ones used here, and that those colors that were unveiled during sandblasting were uncovered within the same layer of paint as the various narrow gauge K-37 numbers on the back of the tender, not on the standard gauge "Baldwin Green" layer just before bare metal (The sandblasting media was never recycled so that it was fresh throughout the whole process. The distance and speed while blasting were kept constant while the number of passes over certain areas of the tender were counted in order to figure out what layers the heralds, narrow gauge numbers, "Baldwin Green," etc. were within.). This is the best kind of proof as it is physical evidence that the narrow gauge K-37's did, in fact, have tricolor heralds on the tenders at one point and was discovered while restoring an actual piece of D&RGW history.

The Boiler Jacket
At this moment, the point of all the time and energy spent on the research for every restoration move made on #491 as well as all the inspections by the State Historical Preservation Office is well understood, I'm sure, but this is incredibly important while talking about the boiler jacket color as it had to be proven to the State Historic Preservation Office as "historical" before it could be done. In order to get to the color that the #491's boiler jacket currently is, lots of research and studying had to be done (imagine that).

Photo credit: Dan Adler

First off, when the locomotive was finally donated to the museum by History Colorado, it was immediately taken off of cosmetic display and rolled over to the roundhouse so that initial inspections may commence to deduce the fitness of the locomotive and decide if it would be a good candidate for a full restoration. During the time that #491 was camped out in the roundhouse, it got a thorough cleaning so that the inspections and work on it were much easier. This cleaning included the removal from the underside of the locomotive of decades of mud, dirt, rocks, oil, grease, and who knows what else that had all combined to create a cement-like substance that was several inches deep in areas. Once this substance was removed from the belly of the locomotives boiler, a fleck of green paint was discovered. This was a substantial discovery as this was hard evidence of green boiler jackets on the K-37's. This fleck of paint was then cut from the jacket, had the asbestos abated, cleaned, and oiled and was then taken to an old photographer in a nursing home by the name of Bob LeMassena (1914 - 2013), who had actually seen the K-37's with green jackets, and confirmed that the color was "spot on." A picture was taken of the fleck (the only copy belonging to the State Historical Preservation Office, which I will try to get another copy of) and, along with the help of the D&RGW Standard Practices book from 1937, photos of other K-37's in the 1930's, and other actual accounts from people who were alive to see the green jackets, it was proven to the State Historic Preservation Office that the green boiler jackets were most definitely historically accurate on the K-37's of the 1930's.

Here is Bob LeMassena:

Photo credit: Matt Isaacks

Here is the D&RGW Standard Practices Book from 1937 stating: "Jackets------------Jacket Enamel (Dark Olive Green)":

Photo credit: Jeff Taylor

Here is K-37 #497 being delivered in 1930 with freshly applied paint via a flat car. Note the obvious difference in the shade of the boiler jacket versus the shade of the cab, air pump jacket, air reservoirs, headlight, steam and sand domes, and cylinder jackets. That isn't just the light "playing off the surfaces in such a way." Along with the photo, Del McCoy added a comment with it stating that #497 was "Resplendent in a dark green jacket...":


Photo credit: Otto Perry and Denver Public Libraries

Here is K-37 #491 in 2015 with freshly applied paint in "resplendent dark green" (both black and white and color photos, obviously taken with a much better digital camera, but I digress):



Photo credit: Dan Adler

Dispelling the "Jackets were green from when they were on the C-41 locomotives" theory:
The boiler jackets for the K-37's are different in areas compared to the C-41's jackets, so if the D&RGW didn't just make brand new jackets for the K-37's, then they would have had to change, modify, and add to the C-41's jackets which would then call for new paint. Here are a few examples of where the K-37 jackets differ from the C-41 jackets:
-The waist sheets that go from the frame to the belly
-The jacketing by the cab (the cab is different on the K-37’s)
-The jacketing by the air pump brackets (the K-37’s have cross-compound air pumps while the C-41’s had single stage air pumps)
-The jacketing around the running board brackets
-The jacketing around the handrail studs
However, lets pretend that the jackets were the exact same and the entirety of the jacket from the C-41 locomotives were reused on the K-37's. While building the K-37 class using the C-41 boilers, the removal of the boiler jackets would be necessary. Anyone who has had anything to do with jacket removal and application can tell you how difficult and frustrating it is and how the paint or bare metal gets beat up, scuffed, and scratched all over while removing or applying them, painting or repainting occurs after the jackets are already on the locomotive. So either way, the boiler jackets on the K-37's were freshly painted when they were sent out of the Burnham shops, whether new or not as it also does not make sense that the D&RGW would let their brand new, homemade locomotives out of the shops with used up, beat, scuffed, and scratched up paint (this is also further proven to not be the case because in the #497 on the flatcar picture, the paint is in pristine condition on the locomotive).

Photo credit: Otto Perry and Denver Public Libraries

Here is #491's old fireman, Earl Newberry (he worked on the 3rd devision), who endearingly referred to #491 as "his engine." He came down to the roundhouse and demanded to know: "where's my engine." As far as I'm concerned, he has more right to call her that than anyone!:

Photo credit: Mike Spera

Conclusion
If you made it this far, I thank you sincerely. I'd like to start the conclusion off by saying that if the evidence for a black boiler jacket and non-tricolor herald happened to be stronger during the research and restoration procedures, then the locomotive would have been painted as such. Being a museum, especially one under the watchful eyes of the State and National Historic Preservation Offices, it is our job to ensure that history is observed, retained, and displayed accurately. After all that said, I hope that this write-up will shed some light behind the decisions made on D&RGW #491 and further prove that the colors in which she, and indeed her sister locomotives during the time, were painted are historically accurate. I am hoping this post reaches far and wide and helps to educate the people who might have been mislead believing that the Colorado Railroad Museum just chose the colors that the engine was painted with arbitrarily because it was "prettier than just black." If you know anyone who may still believe that tricolor heralds or green boiler jackets on the narrow gauge were never a thing, please use these points, show them this write up, or bring them to the museum to get the whole story in person.

Thank you all,
Jeff Berrier
ColoradoRailroadMuseum.org




Edited 26 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2018 03:46PM by JeffryBerri.