Steam locos: Do you like to see them running Shiny or Dirty ?

I thought 76079 looked great back in 2008, when they let her collect some muck during her Welsh adventures

 

A bit of soot along the boiler is nice.

It stops the top of the boiler becoming part of the sky.

 

As said above, it's all a context thing. Although I do like seeing a nice, clean, shiny obviously well cared for loco, some of the best photos do have an element of grime on them as they feel more authentic.

34016 during the End of Southern Steam event on the Mid Hants in July 2007. Minus nameplates and application of grime.

92212 at the Mid Hants ASG on 19th Oct 2019.

 

What happens when you get to Dudley Port?

 

Never saw this last year.....
For many road engines, as found was fair condition, parked up in the barn.
For many railway locomotives, as found was after 5 years of run-down in service, then 15 years basking in the salt air of the Bristol Channel.

Most American railway attractions have no volunteers. All staff are paid, and run heritage diesel more than steam as for Joe Public, any train ride is enough of a novelty. For most lines, other than the biggies like Cumbres & Toltec and Durango & Silverton, it is a struggle to keep their one steam locomotive running at all.
The US steam railroad that carries in excess of 18 million passengers, 365 days a year has always since 1955, had a policy of clean, shiny locomotives.......

For me, I like clean, well presented locomotives, but I can't abide the polished wheel rims and silver smokebox hinges that seem to prevail in certain institutions

 

For my part, I'd cheerfully take even seeing my own ugly mug reflected in burnished steel over those bl**dy TTTE faces any day of the week.

Still, if it brings the punters in, hey .... it's all good!

 

Fewer and fewer of those in evidence these days, for reasons oft discussed on this forum.

Tom

 

Clean is good. Shiny, not good (I get sent a lot of loco pictures for the database and they are often of newly restored/overhauled locos and it is sometimes difficult to see the actual loco details through the reflections from shiny paintwork!)

 

The photo of 45231 above shows that black locos can look OK when a bit dirtied; but I think green (red or blue) locos should be clean and shiny.

Sent from my I3312 using Tapatalk

 

I would say that anyone wanting to replicate a paint finish on a model of 45231 looking like this would do to find anything Black at all, other than the coal in the tender.

 

I've personally never really saw the attraction of having a perfectly polished locomotive that looks like a museum piece at the head of a train. Partly because (having done my time as a cleaner) locomotives are slowly self-dirtying as you clean them and it's rather soul destroying to aim for a perfection which is never achievable! If you're happy to use cleaning products that would not have been used in the 50s, there are a number of car cleaning products that both clean and slightly polish a locomotive in one go, which is quite helpful if you're the only cleaner on duty and you've got an 8F to smarten up! It will be clean enough with a little bit of 'evidence of work', the best of both worlds!