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Trains Magazine 1959 June Western Pacific welcomes home the PErshing
Trains Magazine 1959 June
June 1959Volume 19 Number 8
NEWS5
NEWS PHOTOS8
THE IVORY HUNTERS14
NAMED FOR A RACE HORSE 16 V-8 LOCOMOTIVE - - 21
WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT? 23
TRAINS GOES OVERSEAS - 1 24
PHOTO SECTION- - 29
BURLINGTON GREYHOUNDS 42
THE RAILFAN, INC. ---47
Railway post office 51Second section 56
Stop, look & listen55Running extra 56
Interchange57
COVER: See pages 23 and 56 for news of Army's last World War I veteran to be discharged.
FOR FREE: 4,000,000 BILLBOARDS
Now that we've all had a chance to see and adjust to Mr. McGinnis' sky-blue box cars as well as to Burlington's Chinese red, Pennsy's shadow keystone, Soo's 6-foot lettering, and sundry other upheavals in freight-car esthetics, the question before the house is this: what price art in railroading?
It's a fair query. The hard-bitten operating man deserves a reply if he asks (as he will) if green or blue or pink paint instead of box-car red will boost the average car payload of 33.4 tons. Paint, per se, may not vary enough in cost to muddy the blood of the purchasing agent, but decorative elaborations can and do. Not always, of course; Penn-sy's Art Director (yes, it has one) trimmed the repaint cost of a GG1 electric by $125 when he substituted a single handsome stripe for the original flow of five pin stripes from end to end. Still, it figures that B&M's cars cost more to paint than, say, Chicago Great Western's.
Ironically, the splurge in box-car attire has coincided with an obvious, nationwide trend toward repainting diesel locomotives as much like steam locomotives as possible. Down South alone, SAL's rainbow snout, Southern's apple green (and circular herald too), Coast Line's purple, L&N's blue-and-yellow scheme - they're all in limbo. Or if more evidence is in order, may we suggest the Electro-Motive color ads on pages 975-982 and 991-998 of Simmons-Boardman's 1941 Locomotive Cyclopedia.
But why bother? Why not print passenger timetables on pulp, keep the box cars drab, and outshop the diesels in solid, unrelieved hues? Or erect new depots with cinder blocks and let styling go hang? Because the ills of railroading cannot be cured internally but must sooner or later be resolved politically . . . in public forum. And no American is going to cast his ballot for an anachronism. Which means that it behooves the industry to be contemporary - in word and deed and appearance. The psychology of color is subtle and unconscious, to be sure; but it is there. It has long since been established that painting various components of shop machines in contrasting pastel shades lowers the accident rate, boosts efficiency and cleanliness. Caterpillar's ad pitch for generations has been geared to its "big yellow machines." What's the last airliner you saw painted black (or truck, for that matter)? And didn't we read of some despicable office efficiency expert who jacked up secretarial availability by painting the women's room a harsh, glaring red?
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