nah Ross, do it right and put the light up high like a steam locomotive was mneant to be!;)

I think having the pilot mounted light gives her a nice look. Gives her a look that no other locomotives have.

That low headlight look is a favorite of mine as well. Aesthetically, 614 and other Chessie locomotives (including the famous Allegheny) suggest what really "modern" steam might look like.

I recall seeing the 614 in the roundhouse in Hagerstown, Md., in the company of one of WM's BL2s (they were still in service then) and a MARC F-unit (at that time, the paint scheme was orange, white, and black, no silver). The 614 looked "newer" than either of the diesels in the house with it at the time, and even more interesting, didn't look out of place alongside something like an SD-40-2!

That low headlight was also on the road's 4-6-4s and 2-8-4s. Of the latter, the 2716 ran for a while as a Southern Railway locomotive in the 1970s; the change to an SR look wasn't bad at all, but I preferred her as a proper Chessie engine:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 67&nseq=55

As she looked in the Southern Railway program:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 69&nseq=19

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 19&nseq=39

C&O's 2-8-4s were in class K-4 (K was the 2-8-2 wheel arrangement in C&O's classification system, and the road's crews referred to the 2-8-4s as "big Mikes"), and were close cousins to the famous 2-8-4s of the Nickel Plate; primary mechanical differences were cylinders 1 inch larger in bore, a bigger tender, a bigger cab, booster engines, and roller bearings throughout. The road rostered 90 of its own (plus some inherited Pere Marquette engines), all built between 1943 and 1947 in several lots by both Lima and Alco, numbered between 2700 and 2789. The last five had welded boilers, and the one in North Judson is from this last group. Nos. 2745 and up also had air reservoirs cast into the frame, as the 614 does.

What a difference moving the headlight makes! A favorite here, NKP 765, cosmetically altered to resemble a scrapped C&O cousin:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 22&nseq=42

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 32&nseq=41

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 48&nseq=23

I live in the wrong time. . .

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 98&nseq=36

A postscript: Years ago I got so disgusted with what passes for entertainment on the appropriately named "boob tube" that I tried to put together a television program that couldn't have been any worse than what I was seeing then, and certainly would be better than any thing on now. It was to have been a program about the adventures of railroaders on the job, with more than a little comedy thrown in (and those of you who know this subject realize how rich a mine of tales that could be), and was to have been set in West Virginia on the eve of WW II, proceeding through the war years. The railroad in the show was to have been patterned after the C&O, with its combination of scenery, a mix of traffic made up of lots of coal, manifest trains, and passenger trains in classic Pullman green, a variety of operating conditions (west of Hinton was a level but curvy flat track capable of speed, east of the same place a mountain road with helper service, branch lines, and independent logging outfits), and of course lots of interesting railroaders. Of course, one the best things visually would be those steam locomotives that looked ahead of their time, machines that seemed to say, "What do you want with that thing called a Diesel?"

One additional comment: Could we be getting a glimpse of what a modern steam passenger locomotive would have looked like if the NKP hadn't bought those Alco PAs?

Was looking for some other photos, and came across some of GTW 6325, now owned by Jerry Jacobson and famous for her time on the Ohio Central. This locomotive looks like it has a Hancock exhaust steam injector:

Visible between about 0:33 and 0:45:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onZmuPSosGY

Nice close-up photo, and you can blow it up a bit, too.

http://www.bownas.net/albums/public/tra ... 040801.jpg

Photo source:

http://www.bownas.net/albums/public/tra ... lbum2.html

Another shot:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=97680

In service shot, sister 6323:

http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr0402/gtw6323.jpg

Scrapped sister 6328:

http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr0302/gtw6328.jpg

Wonder if any Ohio Central people might chime in on what they thought of this device.