From: woodburner@earthlink.net
I realize this is tangential by virtue of the SJ&SN's later absorption into
the SP, but given the preserved combination car, I think it has some
significance.
I've been reading the Porter Memorandum Books and found an interesting note
regarding the finish of SJ&SN mogul locomotive "Jacob Brack." The engine
was large for Porter, with 12x18 cylinders, 40" drivers and 26" truck
wheels. It was equipped with a 1050 gallon tank on eight 24" wheels, no
injector, (although #4 Sellars 1876 is written after that) and a 16"
Williams lamp. The name "Jacob Brack" was to be put on the cab panel, and
the tender was to be lettered "San Joaquin & Sierra Nevada" with no
abbreviation for railroad following.
Of great interest to me was the note regarding the engine's painting.
It was to be painted in "our regular style of Painting with Gilt letters &c.
& Blue paint where we usually put brown in tender striping, etc.."
This is remarkable – most entries specify lettering and numbering, but very
few mention painting color or style; exceptions are generally a specific
request from a purchaser, such as "black with gilt" and so on. This entry
not only describes a specific request - blue striping - but also offers a
rare account of brown striping as "usually" used on tenders.
Photographic evidence indicates that Porter began to employ a painting style
similar to that of the Pennsylvania Railroad in about 1878, which used a
black or dark green ground for panels of gold and white, with "stiles" or
border stripes at the top and bottom of the cistern in brown. The brown
"stile" (Baldwin's term) is documented on both contemporary Baldwin drawings
of PRR tenders in the Stanford painting data books, as well as large scale
models of Pennsylvania engines and the 1939 PRR restoration of a 1880s PRR
consolidation locomotive. I had suspected that brown would have been
employed in on the Porter copy and was very happy to see it confirmed.
I am not aware of photographs showing the engine as built, but believe it
would have had a tender divided up into panels with ornamental ends, of
gold, possibly with a smaller cream stripe inside, and the blue stiles at
top and bottom of the tank.
One question remaining is the ground color – was it dark green or black, as
PRR practice, or another shade? It would be logical that whatever color
was employed would be visually harmonic with blue stiles, or that Porter
would have determined another ground color to suit the blue. Other
requests in the Porter memorandum books for the same time period mention
black with gold, with one request for red wheels. While it seems safe to
assume that red wheels were not a Porter standard, the requests for black
may or may not be duplicating an existing finish, and entered to record the
customer's desired color.
An additional locomotive ordered from Porter by the SJ&SN, the
"B.F.Langford," has no mention of blue.
The obvious connection here is to the use of blue as a ground, or body color
for the preserved SJ&SN combine – its clear that someone on the railroad
liked the color and was in a position to employ its use. The other
interesting thing is that this is a fairly early example of a deliberate
harmony of colors used on both and engine and a passenger car. I've seen
other examples, but nearly all are later, from about 1902-1907, and refer to
engines painted Pullman color to match their train; the earlier example is a
second or third hand account that describes an entire 1840s train, engine
and cars, painted pale blue, but within a vastly different period of
aesthetics.
All in all, the little line must have been a sight to see.
Jim Wilke
