There were criticisms of just that nature, mostly "foamer" types on places like Facebook; you would think they hadn't gotten over losing the Civil War!

Some of it did appear even in "serious" venues on this; read the comment following the Picket article linked below:

http://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/20 ... otive.html

I do not know the details about the paint scheme of the locomotive.

But I did work for a museum for 30 years and still volunteer at a railroad museum.

Museums should not make artifacts than never existed; like painting ships or trains with two different color schemes at the same time. One point of history is more than most visitors can deal with.

If you have two events; use video, graphics and other media to illustrate the second one.

Ted Miles, a guy with lots of Civil War ancestors on both sides of the conflict.

One reference I read said that black is historically authentic for the period the engine restoration is intended to represent. Apparently, scraping paint had revealed the colors applied around 1930 which was intended to represent an earlier scheme. It did not clarify whether that earlier scheme was just hypothetical or actually proven to have existed.

What were the actual colors used on this locomotive between the time it was built and the time it began wearing a black color scheme that has been replicated for this current restoration?

If that. For decades, Baltimore's inner harbor has displayed the USS Constellation. For most of that time, she was billed as the oldest US warship afloat (IIRC). In the early 1990's research determined that she was actually much newer. Due to some accounting slight of hand in the 1850's, the navy "rebuilt" the Constellation by jacking up the anchor and driving a new ship underneath, since congress wouldn't authorize the construction of a new ship, and ordered the rebuilding of the old one (again IIRC).

My point is, when the curator was asked if the controversy was hurting visitation, he replied, "No, since most people think it's a pirate ship."

The vast majority of people seeing the Texas will no doubt be wondering which Thomas character it is, and wondering where its face is.

Ugh.

It's behind the Al Jolson disguise.

The statement from the Atlanta History Center about why the black paint scheme was chosen was partially because no one knows what the color scheme before the 1880's actually was. The more colorful paint it has worn since 1936 was based off of Wilbur Kurtz's research, but there were no documents to prove he was correct.

My only complaint is the number... "Texas #12" never existed. If they were going to keep the name, they should have kept the number it wore with that name, even if it appeared as a later engine... in my humble opinion.

But that's a minor complaint.. they did a lovely job with the restoration, and the museum made sure the restoration was done right by people who know and understand railroads.

How did Mr. Kurtz's research determine his 1936 color scheme if there were no documents to research?

Kurtz was the son in law of Captain Fuller, the conductor on The General the day of the Great Locomotive Chase. I believe most of his research was based off of interviews and recollections from people who were involved in the chase. Unless an actual paint diagram shows up, Kurtz's paintings are the closest anyone is going to get to an accurate visual of how The General and The Texas looked in 1862.

Okay, I see. So there was no scraping down through layers of old paint to find the earlier colors or anything like that. I can see a lot of margin for error in interpreting what people passed down by word of mouth about colors.

Generally I believe there has been a lot of misinterpretation of early color schemes that has resulted in the common characterization of them being gaudy. My sense of them is that they tended to be extremely fine and tasteful. Although I suppose there were some gaudy schemes that actually existed in that era.

Verbal descriptions are limited to references to types of red, green, yellow, blue, etc. But the modern day interpretation of those labels is likely to jump to the conclusion of the full pure primary color hues rather than rendered as more neutralized, grayed, versions of those colors.

I suspect the engine has been re-boilered at least once since the end of the Civil War, and probably new jacket at that time, so there is nothing to scrape down to.

Begs the question, how close is the present boiler to the original in both size and design? If a major change, that kind of sets the earliest it can be restored to.

Using the color lithographs that still exist from the period, I believe that the engines were plenty colorful. The idea that "grayed" or "neutralized" versions of the colors used is, I believe, a modern mis-interpretation, based on the fact that most of the images we ever see of the era are in black and white or sepia tone. We have a hard time conceptualizing their world as just as colorful as ours.

http://www.pacificng.com/print.php?page=/ref/locobuilders/blw/style/baldwinstyles.htm

Not only was the Texas reboilered it was also changed from five foot to standard gauge. Like the General it had outside foot rails on its sides during the Civil War period, so its appearance has been changed quite a bit, making it impossible to back date it to its war time look. We need to keep this in mind while discussing it.

Based on this highly-researched model, I don't think it had the outside foot rails. But I do agree the appearance is vastly different today than her CW configuration.