Why do I like the 1950s/'60s so much?

[Russ Bellinis]

Interesting! Good point. I know that British steam engines in the 1960s became VERY run down -- I have several books showing colour railway pics taken in the 1960s. Steam locos ran in Britain until 1968 and British Railways allowed many of them to become very run-down and rusty. Instead of being black or green, many were a rusty brown or grey -- very undignified. Some were even shorn of their numbers or name plates and appeared to have chalk numbers scribed on their sides!

I do a fair bit of current rail-fanning with my kids and -- while the diesel engines appear to be in good condition -- most of the freight cars are very rusty and many are covered in graffiti! So the same is partly true of the modern era but maybe not as severe as the '50s/60s?

Rob

Robert, in the late 1990's the U.P., BNSF, and Tropicana started running what were essentially Carrier-Transicold trailer refrigeration units on their mechanical reefers. They ran Thermo King units as well for the early experiments, but in the case of BNSF, they had so many safety blue flag violations committed by T-K technicians that the company sent out a letter to all T-K dealers advising them that they would be removing their units and that T-K techs would be considered treepassers and subject to prosecution if they set foot on BNSF property! Carrier did not want the same situation to happen with us, so the company put on trainiing seminars all over the country with their dealer techs to teach us Blue Flag law, basic railroad safety, etc. When we went over to the Tropicana yard to look over one of the cars equipped with a Carrier unit, one of the guys noticed how dirty and beat up the car looked and asked how often they washed them. The BNSF supervisor in charge of freight car maintenance said "Never! The only reason for a car to be repainted or cleaned up is if we need to rebuild it, or remove enough graffiti to restencil the reporting marks." Most of the railroads look at their diesel engines as sort of rolling bill boards for advertising the company ( some don't care as long as they run reliably), but it seems nobody cares how a freight car looks as long as it is in good reliable operating condition.