Re: Coloured Steam Locos (was: What's the difference between a steam and diesel loco?

[billbolton.REMOVE-To-EMAIL@computer.org (Bill Bolton)]

On Tue, 29 Dec 1998 10:22:45 +1100, Bob Gioia <alco@acay.com.au>
wrote:
>It matters if they run for a museum and are suppose to be "restored to their
>former glory". I'm begining to think we should be saying "rebuilt to the latest
>standards".

Since that tended to be an ongoing feature of railway locomotives
(whatever their motive power) and other rolling stock over its working
lives... if its kept working, its quite reasonable to expect that it
will continue to be upgraded to meet current operational standards.

If you like them "restored to their former glory", the question then
arises of *which* former glory, as they probably had several episodes
of it after successive major maintenance/rebuilds.

An operational locomotive is still accumulating operational history.
Since most remaining operational mainline steam locomotives now spend
their casual operational time doing things which are often not very
typical of what they did in their full time operational days,  I can't
see why there is any particular historical imperative preventing being
painted in some other scheme that those it has carried in the past.
The new scheme then becomes just another part of the locomotives
ongoing operational history.

Cheers,

Bill

  
Bill Bolton
Sydney, Australia