Greg,
I wasn't saying the whole roof! I stated the sides of the clerestory, you know where the windows are. Which before the great migration to Grande Gold would have been standard practice on the D&RGW with the roofing material black. Pretty much any clerestory roofed car I've ever seen, read or heard about in regular service would have been painted this way excepting tourist roads and Hollywood paint jobs.
I fail to see what the "big deal" is when it comes to painting equipment, why do tourist railroads have to paint equipment to look simply tacky? The beloved "Grande Gold" was a prime example of this there was no practical or economical savings to painting cars this way it simply was a PR stunt to cater to the tourist crowd and to carry on the PR from the railroad fairs where equipment had been exhibited. To be honest I hold the C&TS to a little higher standard than the rest of the flash in the pan tourist jobs out there and hence why I made the suggestion I did, I flat out think an all silver roof is ugly, and I see NO reason why the C&TS couldn't alter the paint scheme to increase the attractiveness of their passenger fleet.
Anyway I think one thing we can agree on is the restoration of the historic passenger cars for the C&TS in the future, its a long time coming and will be good to see.
-=Andrew=-