We have scale models of engines that no longer exist in the prototype, that is a benefit of the models.

Walthers came out with Penn Central Steam decals.
hey, dream a little..

I don't model in scale, but only through an imaging program. This "Century Duplex" is one of my favorites.

Thank goodness we will never see some of those schemes in real life. That orange, gold, yellow, and green eyesore is enough to induce vomitting.

I have seen numerous renditions of gaudy paint schemes. I seems to remember LGB taking one of their numerous "Stainz" models, throwing a cowcatcher on it with a balloon stack and selling it. I thought it was funny.

And, how about Old Rivets, the 1st PRR GG-1 electric, in a ConRail scheme, and Bicentennial at that! One poster exclaimed in pain, "Oh, my eyeballs"!

You DO realize that Conrail actually DID repaint 4800 in that scheme?

What's worse, I rode behind ConRail Bicentennial 4800 in a revenue passenger train of dead Reading Company MU cars on the NorthEast Corridor. It was during a S.E.P.T.A. city transit strike in late April, 1976. Can you believe it?

Believe it? I have pictures.

I do remember standing at the end of the platform in Trenton, looking at 4800 in Bicentennial with the long train of Reading cars behind (IIRC one had a pan up for car lighting, so not entirely 'dead') and thinking 'this has to be one of the rarest things ever seen...'

This was in the same era where, if you were so inclined, you could go over to Reading Terminal and find early and later Silverliners, heavy steel MUs in a variety of colors with gas-plasma digital speedometers, RDCs, and FP7s side-by-side -- not even in museums did you get such an assortment. (And then you could go inside and see the offspring of a Zephyr that mated with a UFO...)

(And this was just a couple of years after EL was regularly running E units with '30s ATSF stainless equipment and steam-generator-equipped Geeps on Stilwells, to go with the existing legacy RS3s and the then-new U34CHs -- which were honorary steam locomotives to watch. And if that weren't enough, for a brief shining moment they were testing the rebuilt PAs...)

It was good to be there. Sorry for the brief foam outburst...

"(And then you could go inside and see the offspring of a Zephyr that mated with a UFO...)"

That would have been Reading Terminal's ticket counter, a facility I never needed to use since I commuted on my Reading Company employee's pass.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.

0Here's the Aristo-Craft SP Alco RS-3 "that was leased to Pacific Electric in 1952, just before the dummy trolley poles and air whistle were installed."