Pete may be right about the later date. What makes me suspicious is that if
it WAS 1942, that combine would have been just recently rebuilt (and one
would think freshly repainted at that time). It looks pretty weathered from
what I can see in the photo.
I also wonder about the engine's paint scheme. Seems pretty early for the
full-fledged blackbird treatment. In a thread last November, Bill Hirt said
he thought the blackbird scheme came in just prior to WW2, and Mike Spoor
mentioned a photo to be published in his forthcoming book showing SW #9132
in black and gray during August, 1941. He said this was the earliest date
he had seen where one of the locomotives that had been delivered in black
was repainted black and gray. So certainly it is possible 9104 would have
been repainted by then (or maybe, being of 1941 vintage, it was delivered
already in the new colors). In the Essex photo, it doesn't look as
weathered as the combine, but I'm not sure it looks like a year-old paint
job either.
Hard to say, and there's not much else in the photo that provides a clear
marker, for me anyway. Maybe someone who knows that area intimately could
nail it. Maybe one of the road or commercial signs or some other landscape
feature provides a clue.
I guess the question for Ken is, how confident are you of the 1942 date?
Jonathan
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