Just FYI, the photographs of Les Davis's locomotive taken on Steve Fisher's layout (page 89) are incorrectly credited. The correct credit should be Geren W. Mortensen, Jr.

Thanks.

Geren (the photographer)

Thanks, Geren, for the correction!

If there's one thing about backwoods people, it is that they were rather proud of their most expensive useful possessions, and thins includes amongst other things like horses and guns the steam locomotive itself.  I don't thin you can have a locomotive look "too elegant" or good looking!!  Heck, if it is dirty, you can be sure the locomotive probably belongs to a larger system or a larger conglomerate that simply does not have the ability to focus on minute details such as keeping the locomotives in perfect tip top clean condition...

My thoughts, though...

Your thoughts provoke memories of a book I once read that was an autobiography of a very prminent writer who had once been a US Navy admiral. In writing about his early carrer he said he was an engineering officer and that the best ships engineering wise were rarely the cleanest so there must be something to the idea that good locomotibes were never the cleanest either. In fact, I doubt if anything in the open air will remain clean for long. Just look at the family car is you don't believe me. Sure the car goes to car wash or you or one of the children wash it periodically. Now why do you think that is?

Irv

On the other hand, you could turn right around and say the same thing about Fire Engines.

Somewhere in teh hsitory of railroading the mentality shifted - because in the early eras of steam on up to about 1865 we see some VERY elegant locomotives [4-4-0s and such] plying the rails. 

That's because previous to 1870's each engineer had it's own engine and no one else rode on that engine. They took pride of their engine and they use to keep it spotless. After that the companies started to assign the engine to multiple engineers to keep the engine on the road.

Now this is quite interesting!!!

it makes sense; a personal possession will be kept better then a fleet possession!

 While not a O scale nor a narrow gauge modeler, I enjoy and appreciated Junior Yamachi wonderful work.

I have found something very exciting for all you 30" fans who are modeling in 30" gauge and not quite feeling right because there was only 20 miles or so of official 30" guage track in all of America and that was in Hawaii on a sugar plantation...

Now as we know, there are very few railroads of 30" guage in America, right? But WAIT A SECOND!!! How many railroads went UNDOCUMENTED?

This excerpt is from "Encyclopedia of Western Railroad History: the Desert States" by Donald Robertson, Page 72:

"One of Arizona Eastern's major shippers must have been Inspiration Copper Co. at Miami. The copper firm purchased these standard guage locomotives new from the factory:

18x24 0-4-0 Porter 5454 9/13

18x24 2-4-2 Porter 5502 3/14

21x26 2-6-4 Porter 5733 10/15

21x26 2-6-4 Porter 6658 6/21

22x26 0-4-0 Porter 7026 7/26
During this same time frame, it purchased 18 [EIGHTEEN!!!] Porter 0-4-0s for the 30 inch mine track. [THIRTY INCH MINE TRACK!!!] In no instance were road numbers listed in Porter construction records that are known."

So there you have it, -n30 Fans, the place where you'll find your narrower narrow guage!! INSIDE larger places like open pit mines!!! And since these railroads were on private property, you're not going to find a whole lot of official paper on these things! You might not even find photographs, seeing as how some private organizaitons are very sensitive to these sorts of things!

But the fact of the matter is that if there is lot of standard Mine apparatus like ore carts in 30" guage, there's been a whole lot more 30" guage trackage out there then we'll ever know!!