Scott Gibbs Wrote:
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> Probably the best source of information on the
> BLW, as delivered paint schemes are the records at
> SMU.
>
> [
digitalcollections.smu.edu]
> ion/rwy/id/32
>
> Scott
The specification books tell you the Baldwin colors and styles used. For example, the specification will say something like "olive green & color, style 103, finish F10." The Baldwin paint books also survive to this day, so if you want to track them down you can look up the schemes as exactly as possible. Note that these paintjobs were applied by hand so they varied slightly from engine to engine based on each painter's interpretation of the paint books--specific locomotives may hence have slight detail differences in the line trim. Examples of the Baldwin paint styles can be found on the internet if you do a good enough web search. Engines from the same class were not always ordered with the same appearance. For example, of the six class 38 engines, while all of them were done with style 49 line trim, the finish differed (C54, D1, etc) one order to the next. You have the first built brown ("lake", but to modern eyes it's just a fancy word for dark brown) with a varnished walnut cab and a lot of brass trim, then two painted olive green with walnut cab and brass trim, then the final three still painted olive green but with a painted cab and mostly painted iron fittings, not brass. Point being, be sure you look up the specific locomotive you want, and not simply another member of its class because they aren't necessarily going to look the same.
In general, Baldwin tended to paint locomotives in wine color during the early 1870's. The bright vermilion-painted wheels so heavily associated with the civil war era go out of fashion and largely disappear from new construction around 1872-1873. Quite abruptly in 1875 Baldwin changes to lake, then more gradually from about 1878-1879 it changed to olive green as the company standard color. Black appears (by customer request) from roughly 1870 onward, increasing in popularity after about 1880. Individual customers could always specify their own schemes. In the case of some particularly good customers which also maintained their own company fashion, most notably the PRR, Baldwin might keep that customer's specific styles on record.
Depending on the severity of service, the local environment, and how well railroad shop crews did touch-up work, the original paint schemes might have been kept intact for as little as 4 or 5 years, to upwards of 15 to 20 in exceptional cases. In most cases of hard-working engines the average will tend towards the lower end of that range. It was not uncommon for engines to be repainted as a means of keeping pace with current fashion as well. Then, as now, fashion changed practically on a whim and an average engine from 1870 looked a lot different than a mechanically-identical engine built only a decade later.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2020 08:27AM by James.
