So I just looked over and measured the 225 tender.
First off I can just make out parts of the 225.
Secondly the yellow IS still there in places. My phone would not take a good photo of it. And to my eyes the yellow Dave and Russ are messing with looks about right.
The important thing there is we can sand it down again someday to reveal the numbers.
So here is where it gets interesting. The rivets are spaced 2-1/4" apart center to center vertically, and about 3-1/4" to 3-3/8" apart center to center horizontally when measuring the lower rivet to the upper. See photos.
When you measure from one rivet to the next in the same horizontal row you get about 6-3/4" give or take.
Looking at the spacing on the '225' the 2 and 5 are at the edge of individual rivets making their spacing close to 7" apart.
There are 2 rows of double riveting, they are just under 21" tall measured from top to bottom.
Measuring the rivets out on the side of the tank where the photo was taken makes the numbers about 22" tall, the bottom of the '2' is about 23" long. And over all the entire '225' is about 7 foot long.
What does all this mean? Well I'll leave that to you. However I'm not sure about the 4:3 scaling, maybe more like 3:4. And it seems the spacing between numbers could be further apart than previously thought. Of course not all locos were done exactly the same so your mileage may vary.
At some point we will sand 225s tender down again and reveal these numbers and hopefully get a good sample of the yellow.
Jeff Taylor
CRRM curator of equipment and rolling stock.