In my professional life, I do stuff where sometimes the "best way" to do something is very subjective. So I'd like to think I've got a thick skin when other people have "suggestions". Sometimes they really can be helpful; if it's not something you can easily fix, at least the next time, you might consider doing it differently.
Shades of paint are especially troublesome. Model railroaders (some of which need to get out of their basement more) are sometimes very adamant when they think you used the wrong color of Burlington Northern green. I have a photo somewhere at the Denver engine terminal where it would seem every BN diesel there was a different green, as weathering took its toll on the paint the railroad used. Some railroads 60 years ago would try to spruce up their shabby locomotives by giving them a coat of shellac. Which made them really look bad when that weathered.
I came across some notes that someone made about the D&RGW 0579 caboose. The claim was that we put the retainer valve on the wrong end when we restored it. Now we tried as hard as possible to not make those kinds of mistake,s and several other things were like that were corrected over the years. But I distinctly remember when we located the plumbing on the one end, that we could see the original holes and mounting points for the original valve (the wood on the ends was not replaced). Did the Grande screw up? Should we have corrected their mistake? Too bad there isn't a way we could put a permanent note on the frame next to the tee "this really is the proper place for this!" The person who made those notes is not with us anymore, so this is a mystery on whether he had better information than my memory does.
Of course, about 6 months ago, someone here made a comment "that the Friends make many restoration mistakes" and I offered to take his list of those items back to the Projects Committee so that they could be addressed. I'm still waiting for that list. So if you bitch to me that I did something wrong, please give me your source of information! I will then take care of that.
Bill Kepner
