Taylor,
That was a very tastefully worded reply. I respect that personal likes are formed by what you grow up with. There was no more treasured moments than to snoop around a simmering steamer on layover at some small outlying terminal on a Sunday. Maybe there was a local hires that was a hostler, or fire tender to keep the steam up. But it was the dirt and grime that was the common occurance during the end of steam era that I experienced. I can not picture how anyone that never walked into a terminal yard on some weekend afternoon, among a dozen sleeping steamers, could ever get the feeling of the life of sound and smell that showed them to still be alive. Only a few of later generation have ever found that gem of a situation by walking into Chama on a morning when 3 or more locomotives were readied for service. Or laying over at night with only one hostler tending to some fire baby sitting. It was a very rare moment to really experience what old steamers were. If born after 1970, and you didn't go overseas, you could rarely capture that occasion and image.
Somehow the clean and shinny steamer, even the Red Striped N&W J, missed that charm of the near by Virgina Blue Ridge, but made up for it with power and sound out on the main line running.
The biggest problem with white paint on steamer is that it creates excessive contrast which fools the brain to only see the white and the lines it creats, and blinds the brain to not see all the shapes of the gray and black of all the machinery behind. It is the difference between a nighttime photo of a N&W engine by O Winston Link (Capturing every shape of spoke and spring) and a daytime photo taken of the China engines with color film.
If you know what good is, then you learn the difference. The worst of all is putting white tires on a Heisler, which was a logging engine and other than coming out of the factory that way for the builder's photo, never ran in service without looking dirty.
