Re: Red vs silver cleristories

Actually, I believe the roof color is the only thing that is authentically correct on these coaches if you want to nit-pick. Reason is that the Rio Grande painted many of their standard gauge coaches Grande Gold, with Silver roofs, and also their NG coaches after the San Juan was gone, and then used those coaches on the Silverton Trains. Therefore, I would have painted them Grande Gold, with the Silver roofs, and they would have been historically correct for 1954 and later. I think the gold coaches would have stood out more against the green and some folks might have mistaken this is the Durango Train if they were driving through the area. Thats not a bad things cause they may have stopped in Chama instead of, or in addition to Durango.
While I am not a big fan of the new red, I admit it does stand out. I think the answer is to get a set of San Juan cars for specials and so forth, then we can have the non-authentic tourist train for the masses, and a REAL Rio Grande train for folks who want to relive a little history of the railroad for which we are riding and seeing!!!
These coaches at least look nicer than the old box car coaches which I first rode and photographed in 1971. I last rode them on a moonlight train in 1993 to Osier and back. Cracked my head a couple of times on the doorways so stood in the open car behind the engine during the night portion mostly.
Steamingly,
Greg Scholl