[timmuir]

jaytrain2, on 13 January 2023 - 02:17 PM, said:

Interesting engine, though can't say I'm very fond of Norris's smokebox door style...

I, too, had a bit of a hangup with the doors on the Norris engines and I can say the same thing about a number of features of Norris locomotives. The green and red pilots, for one. I don't know why Mr. Norris thought that that was such a good look, as those colors do not mix well. If you look at his first locomotives from the late 1830's, it is reported that their boilers were jacketed with alternating red and green wooden slats. So the color scheme goes way back. Seems kind of strange to have this type of door in 1862, but then these classes of Norris still had the old style "turned D" smokebox, with the cylinders bolted to the sides of the D. The shape of the door kind of follows the shape of the smokebox in section. Functional, too, in that it made cleaning out the smokebox easier.

Col. A. Beckwith.

[Weter]

Green&red (but especially red-orange) are contrast colors, so on one environment one looks brighter, on other - the second.
So for tall smoke-stacks, radio-towers, navigation signs, which all needed to be seen well on either snow, foliage, overcast or clear skies.

Nice engine. Thanks for showing it.

[timmuir]

Weter, on 18 January 2023 - 03:10 PM, said:

Green&red (but especially red-orange) are contrast colors, so on one environment one looks brighter, on other - the second.
So for tall smoke-stacks, radio-towers, navigation signs, which all needed to be seen well on either snow, foliage, overcast or clear skies.

Nice engine. Thanks for showing it.

Now, that is interesting. I never gave that aspect much thought, but it does makes sense.

Here's a rendering of a model by Jon Davis, of the Central Pacific's Norris locomotive, "Gov.Stanford." as delivered in standard Norris colors of the time, the 1860's. The engine is now at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, but in later SP colors.



Thanks weter.

[Weter]

Orange-fluorescent stripes on green base are default paint scheme for equal-easy seeing locomotive on either clear or overcast weather conditions here:
http://www.elvastowe...post__p__282571