Re: Green Boiler JACKETS on the D&RGW K-37's - Eyewitness Accounts???

JeffryBerri Wrote:
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> . . .  First off, when [#491] was finally donated
> to the museum by History Colorado, it was im-
> mediately taken off cosmetic display and rolled
> over to the roundhouse so that initial inspec-
> tions 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 com-
> bined 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 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 Preser-
> vation Office, which I will try to get another copy of)
> and, along with the help of the D&RGW Standard
> Practices book of 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 K-37 #497 with freshly applied paint be-
> ing delivered [to Alamosa] via a flatcar in 1930:

(Scanned without permission by Roosso Loco from page 27 of 'Otto Perry's Railroad Journey' by Dell A. McCoy)

> Note the obvious difference in the shade of the
> boiler jacket versus the shade of the cab, the 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 [caption]
> stating "Resplendent in green boiler jacket, graphite
> grey smoke box, aluminum leaf lettering and black
> trim, the 497, 'brand new' in 1930, sat in Alamosa
> on a standard gauge flat car."
>
> . . . 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 [of which they were VERY
> proud] out of the shops with used up, beat up, scuffed
> and scratched up paint (this is also further proven to
> not be the case because in the #497 on the flatcar pic-
> ture [above], the paint is in pristine condition . . . )
>
> Thank you all,
> Jeff Berrier



And Thank YOU Jeff for a GREAT birthday present!  (I'm turning 78 today as I write this on 12/26/2019).

You have done a superb job, IMHO, of summarizing all of the painstaking research done by the CRRM in the course of returning #491 to her own birthday glory!

I do have two questions / comments on the above —

1) Did Dell McCoy make up the caption on page 27 of his Otto Perry book out of thin air, or had he gotten the description a few years earlier directly from the photographer?  McCoy's book is based on Perry's postcards, so does the original postcard for DPL photo OP-7740 still exist (where is the David S. Digerness collection today?), and - if so - does the postcard carry a similar caption?  IMHO, it would certainly constitute eyewitness testimony if one of Otto Perry's original late twenties / early thirties postcards - with his own caption - could be located.

2) The D&RGW was - quite justifiably, IMHO - VERY proud of the job that they had done in reverse-engineering the K-36 design and adapting it to their entirely home-grown (except for the old Baldwin boilers)* brand new K-37 locomotives.  I cannot imagine that a publicity-conscious railroad like the D&RGW would have allowed any of the K-37's – especially not the first one, #490 – to be shipped out of Denver without considerable fanfare and some kind of public ceremony.  Has any effort been made to dig through the archives of the Rocky Mountain News for a description of the unveiling of the D&RGW's homemade locos - especially around the time that #490 was completed and shipped?  Such a news article would probably include a detailed description of the new engines provided by the railroad — another invaluable eyewitness account . . .

- El Abuelo Histœrico, Greengo y Curmudgeoño de los Locomoturas Viejos y Verdes,
aka Der Grossväterlich DünkelOlivGrünDampfKesselMantelLiebHabender

*  I once mistakenly thought that the D&RGW had gotten the running gear for the K-37s – or at least the frames and cylinder castings – from Baldwin, and had "only" combined these parts with the old C-41 boilers, but that was NOT the case.  Virtually all of the new parts were designed, cast and/or forged, and machined by the D&RGW and/or their subcontractors in Denver.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2019 07:51AM by Russo Loco.