If you want to see bright and crazy colors on a steam locomoitve, look at Monson #4 here at Edaville in the 1956. It wasn't even painted this badly at Freedomland! That was only for a few seasons, and actually at the end of each season they'd truck the whole train (Monson 3 and 4, and the coaches) back up to South Carver for the winter.

http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?2004052211263825277.jpg:bysearch:steam:SEARCHTYPE=SIMPLE&PAGE=15&SEARCHSTRING=steam&BOOL=ANY

I really like 19th century steam, so I prefer a russian iron or green boiler jacket to a black "dip job". Another unusual paint job is the Blue Mountain & Reading #425 (ie Reading & Northern) which was painted blue.

Ever seen an orange/yellow steam locomotive...in operation? I've got a picture...somewhere.

-Ed Kelley

here are a bunch of Mason paintschemes I have "painted"..
all are prototypical except for the batch labeled "Fictional schemes"..
these are all from around the 1870's era.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~scottychaos/ON_LINE

Ed,

It's not easy to find yellow or orange locomotives in the US; but some of the streamlined locomotives of the 1930s were painted those colors; most well known being the locomotives built for the Hiawatha.

The Godchaux Sugar Baldwin 0-4-4T at Vintage Museum of Transportation & Wildlife, 1421 Emerson Ave., Oxnard, CA also wears a yellow and orange paint scheme, but I don't know if it is accurate. Another Godchaux Sugar engine I photographed in Louisiana was painted black; but it was probably a post-Godchaux owner scheme; while the one in the Oxnard museum was a pre-Godchaux (Belle P???? and Reserve RR) color scheme.

If look at the UK and its colonies, there are tons of examples. If you have seen the Thomas the Tank Engine books or videos, you may have seen the twins "Bill" and "Ben". One of their real counterparts is "Alfred", a 1953 Bagnall tank engine at Bodmin and Wenford Railway, Bodmin, Cornwall, UK; it's "Port of Par" livery is a dead ringer for the twins.

Bright colors are strange to our eyes; but just about every color you can imagine (including some reds faded to pink) have probably adored a steam locomotive somewhere at one time or another.

-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a

Surviving World Steam Locomotives