Before 1928 when the CB&Q adopted its modern lettering scheme for steam locomotives (rectangular Burlington Route herald on the tender and gold lettering & engine numbers on the cab), the scheme had been large engine numbers on the tender and a small CB&Q on the cab.
Do we know what color those letters and numbers were: white, gold, or some kind of metal leaf?
I believe the Colorado & Southern used aluminum leaf, since the original lettering, at least on some of their narrow gauge engines, remained long enough to be captured on color film. But you'd never know that from contemporaneous black & white photos. The letters and numbers just look white. So there's no way of determining the true color of the Burlington's pre-1928 lettering from old photos.
Despite these severe doubts about the value of B&W photos for determining color, one clue suggests the older Burlington lettering may have been gold. The 1928 Otto Perry photo on page 55 of Burlington Bulletin No. 34, shows the Q's 4200, their one-of-a-kind 2-8-8-2, probably waiting at the edge of the Bridgeport yard to push a train up Angora Hill. Here's a direct link to the photo at DPL:
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15330coll22/id/42372/rec/1
Note this engine has large numbers both on the tender (old scheme) AND on the cab (new scheme), suggesting it had not been completely repainted. None of the numbers look white, which perhaps is a function of lighting and/or the engine being dirty. But the thing is the numbers appear to be the same color. And if the cab numbers have been newly painted, that would suggest the numbers on the tender were likely the same color, i.e., gold or whatever they called the equivalent imitation used on freight engines (name escapes me at the moment). Of course, it could just as well be that the cab numbers were newly painted gold and the tender numbers weathered, dirty white.
What do you think?
Thanks for any guidance,
Jonathan