Just got my 2015 BRHS calendar in the mail yesterday, and though I got involved near the end of the process in the proofreading of the photo captions, One thing got past me that I feel should be clarified. The March photo was taken at the C&S Seventh Street/Rice Yard engine facilities in Denver, and the last sentence of the caption reads, "Notice the closeness of the engine service structure and how they are painted black as opposed to the standard Mineral Red." The structures shown are the 1946 steel coal chute, the big fuel oil tank, the steel sand tower and oil and water cranes. While mineral red was indeed the standard color specified for structures of wooden construction, steel structures were normally painted black -- with the notable exception of water tanks, which had always been painted mineral red since the earliest ones were erected back in 1906-08. Thus, while wooden coal chutes were supposed to be painted mineral red, their steel counterparts were to be black. But there are a good many cases of the wooden coal chutes being painted black instead of mineral red, both on the Q itself and on the C&S and FW&D.
This same "rule" also applied for the most part to company service equipment in the pre-1949 era when such equipment was painted either mineral red or black. Back in the early years of the 20th Century there weren't many pieces of steel company service equipment -- mostly steam-powered equipment such as wrecking derricks, pile drivers, locomotive cranes (i.e., self-propelled cranes) and water tanks, both tank cars and former locomotive tenders. All these were painted black, while the bulk of company service equipment, consisting of old freight and passenger cars converted for specific uses, was painted mineral red. Again, there was one notable area of indecisiveness as to proper paint color: spreaders (both Jordans and other brands) could be found in either mineral red or black, and in the post-1948 era of Omaha orange for company service equipment, most of them were painted orange, but some remained black and some remained mineral red right through the 1960s. Also, the "tenders" of wrecking derricks -- generally flatcars of one type or another with a stand for the derrick boom to rest on during travel -- were usually painted black, too. Thus, if you're a modeler, you definitely need photos of the equipment you're modeling.
Hol
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Posted by: Hol Wagner <holpennywagner@msn.com>
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