Re: Cooke Locomotive Works Painting for Narrow Gauge Locomotives

Unless you have something like a builder's specification or a newspaper clip describing them, you cannot be absolutely sure. Hopefully one of the resident South Park experts has just that and can chime in. The different builders had their own standard practices but customers could and did sometimes specify custom colors.

I do not know Cooke practice specifically*, but I know the general industry trends by that time. I believe I know the photograph you refer to. The photo I am thinking of shows a fairly spartan paint scheme without much trim. Dark base colors with or without trim were pretty well industry standard by the early 80's. Brown, green, and black were all commonly encountered that timeframe, none of which would be particularly distinguishable from each other in B&W photography. Blue was commonplace around the Civil War era but would've been rather "retro" by the 1880's. Blue's not impossible by any means, but it wouldn't be my first guess either for that period. Bare wood cabs--never universal--were largely out of fashion by ~1880 and would've been unusual on freight engines at any rate. Bare polished cabs were more usually part of passenger engine styling, same for extensive brass trim. Assume the cabs were painted to match the rest of the engine unless you have direct proof otherwise.

*Cooke was a small builder, quite often third place just in its own city. Good information on it seems scarce. I've seen nothing like we have out there for firms like Baldwin, Brooks, Schenectady, Rogers, or Porter.