The Kansas City Southern, through the generosity of CEO Mike Haverty, donated an FT unit to Union Station Kansas City for the rail museum. Problem was, it was unpainted.
Noted rail historian Pete Hansen was assigned the task of working with Mid Continent rail car restoration to get the engine paint correct for the 1940-ish period. Pete did his usual, exhaustive research and came up with several possibilities. At length, one version was selected. The difficulty then was creating the correct stick-on stripes, paint and logo. It took several tries to get this right. Pete hovered over the project like a mother hen over chicks. At the outcome, everyone agreed that the final result was very close, but was in fact a compilation of schemes, not perfectly representing a single prototype. Why was this so difficult? In the case of the KCS, it was because there were no precise measurements to go by. If the information had been written down (before the digital age, remember) it was lost ³in the mists of time² as they say. Moral of the story: Try though we may to ³make it like the prototype² that is an ill-defined target, and IMHO, and for MY purposes, over obsession with tiny details is sometimes just arguing over how many angels will fit on the head of a pin. We will never know, because at the bottom of it, there is no perfect answer. Your mileage may vary :) To see how ³our² 1:1 KCS turned out, take a look at my web site www.unionstationphotos.com Hope MTH sees fit to offer something similar with carriages in S :) Cheers, Roy Inman
