breezinup posted:Hot Water posted:Now, hope everyone remembers that Southern Pacific 4-8-4s did NOT have white tires & wheel rims! Only builder photos of a particular road number, seemed to have such painting "details", and the locomotives did NOT appear in service that way.Apparently some of them had white tires and rims, if even for a short time period. Here's a Daylight GS, no. 4411, and its engineer, preparing to head out on its maiden run in 1937, and some others. The 4th shot shows grime on the engine's boiler, so clearly it was in operation with whitewalls. The bottom shot may be a builder's photo, not sure.
It comes down to just what to people/customers want to model. Those who want to model the "builder photo appearance", or the "one off, special event", or as the vast majority of ALL SP 4-8-4s appeared in NORMAL/REGULAR service. To each his own. I personally tried to model the very late 1940s thru the mid 1950s, and EVERYTHING I had was properly weather for THAT specific railroad and their unique water/operating conditions, based on prototype photos.
