Original Diesel Colours

[Mountcastle]

Were the A&A's 44 ton diesel engines originally painted orange and black? I've only ever seen B&W photos of them before they were repainted the first time, but for some reason, I have it in mind that they may have been orange and green.

Does anybody know for certain?

[BSOR Patarak]

They were indeed orange and black. The paint scheme that 110, 111 and 112 are wearing now is pretty close to what they arrived from GE wearing. (That is, 110 and 111 as far as the stripes go). I think the original orange may have been a little more yellow orange instead of the red orange they are wearing now. I haven't seen too many color shots of the early stuff. Here is one:



There are several black & white pictures in Lewis's book of the early scheme. The A&A went with the solid orange and black and no nose stripes sometime after 1967.

Pat

[Benjamin Maggi]

Dig those boiler tube pilots (cow-catchers) on #110!

[Mountcastle]

That resolves that. I don't know why I thought the black bits were once green.

It does raise a question in my mind, however, concerning the origins of the orange and black color scheme of the railroad. I was told that the excursion train was painted orange and black because those happened to be the local high school's colors (an odd reason to paint a train anything), but this photo demonstrates that there was already an orange and black precedent in the diesel dating from the 1940s.

My question then is this: do the paint jobs of the diesel locomotives mark the very beginning of the use of the orange and black color scheme for the Arcade & Attica or was the color scheme of the diesels also determined by existing precedent? Of course, going back further than the 44 tonners necessarily leaves one with black & white photos for research. The black and white images of the old steam locomotives cause one to assume that the numbers on the cab and the lettering on the tenders were white, but was that the case? Might it have been that they were actually orange and not white at all?