Orange stairwells on B&M units?

I realize this is not the B&M forum but it is New England and much more active so I thought I would post here. Looking at pictures of the last days of B&M I see the steps of many of the locomotives are painted a bright orange. Now I realize the safety idea behind the visibility of steps but what spurred this action? Did the unions or FRA mandate steps be painted a visible color? Or was it the B&M adminstration? My guess is it was not the FRA seeing as other railroads did not subsribe to it. Any insight would be much appreciated!

I can't answer your question and I certainly have never seen any B&M engine with orange paint on them ever. However I have seen pictures of some B&M engines with yellow mixed in with the Blue, Black and White paint scheme. I was told it was short lived and only a few engines ever received the yellow paint when the B&M went from Maroon and Gold to the "Blue Birds".

I believe that when the shops removed the footboards from a loco, they painted the stepwells orange.

SLR 393 is correct!-I think!?

A Federal Law did require the removal of footboards on both ends of locomotives,and while many railroads stenciled,"Caution No Footboards",this is what B&M did.

Riding on the footboards probably helped in coupling etc.,but could be dangerous for obvious reasons.

Have several photos of PTCO and GTRR switchers street running on Portlands' Commercial St. in the steam era,with a crew member perched on the footboard. No protection at all if a motorist slammed into(or got slammed by the locomotive) the approaching locomotive.

But of course motorists were more respectful of "trains" back then,and there right of way-and-weren't as distracted by 99% useless chatter on their cell phones!

Bud

244INMYPANTS! wrote:I realize this is not the B&M forum but it is ... much more active ...

The B&M forum would be more active if you had posted this there...

True, but I was going for a response sometimes this year and not next

I don't know if painting the stairwells orange was the result of a mandate, but I remember they started it in 1977, with the GP-9's. The orange was applied as the units went in for shopping. As I recall, they did the mechanical work, the loco got painted and the stairs got the orange paint. They always seemed to show up on BD-9 for their post shopping shake down run. Somewhere, I have a photo of the first one to get the treatment, switching cars at Exeter NH. I think it was 1739.

I'll move it to B&M forum so that it will appear in both and have a better chance at being answered.

-otto-

According to my book "Before Guilford" by Preston Cook, "The orange stepwells on the units were a short-lived modification which was reportedly applied as the result of a series of confusing and contradictory changes in safety standards." (p. 58)

Alan S.

Hi All,

Interesting shade of orange, I was expecting international orange, sort of a dayglo color, really bright. The visibility issue always plays a big role in safety issues and so you have many attempts at solutions. This is only another one, and apparently was short lived.

Such a thing occured with the California Freeways. At one time there was a stretch of Interstate 15, the Las Vegas route, from Southern California, where a mile or so in various areas was painted some rather bright colors. Yup, you would drive along, rather fast by the way, and suddenly you were on a bright green freeway. After a while, you were back on black top, only to find yourself further down the road on another stretch of brightly colored freeway, of another color. And so it went for several miles. Interesting experiment, never repeated, and none of the colors became the color of any freeway.