Just out of Windsor Station, CP 3101 leaves Montreal West in June 1954. Sure beats the ugly modern stuff that passes there today, though a CP Hudson did visit about three years ago.

http://abpr.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi?a ... anColl.jpg

You make an excellent point regarding "the ugly stuff that passes through there today". This particular photograph shows how much the company cared about the very appearance of the locomotive and rolling stock. The matching and complimentary colors, design or the locomotive being accented by striping and lettering, not to mention jacketing that identified the company and the service it was offering. The details were important to a railroad company at that time. CNR did much the same. Modern image paint schemes seem to leave so much to be desired.

Peter Max vs. Stevens, Kuehler, Lowey, et al. The late '60's and early to mid '70's destroyed much of what came before, changing the genteel and classic into mass confusion and chaos. Many of today's paint schemes are hold-overs from those times and they are still as irrelevant now as they were then. The AT&SF Warbonnet is one of the most recognized icons of the golden age of railroading. It holds up as well in the early 2000s and it did when designed in the late 1930s. The Frisco mandarin orange and white, the MKT solid red or John Deere green and yellow and most other schemes of that era will certainly never be as recognizable or lamented as UP's Armour Yellow, IC's chocolate and orange, Pennsy's tuscan and cat's whiskers or many other classics. Who needs to pay top dollar to an industrial designer (who has intensely studied his subject matter) when a vice president's wife, a model railroader or an overpriced advertising firm can create something "new and fresh"? Don't get me started..........

Don C.