Some observations: black Elesco Feedwater heater and piping.....and look closely at the color of the striping. It doesn't look white to me, but imitation aluminum!
I don't think the Feedwater heater is necessarily black, among other things. It's just the shading of an old, reproduced photo. Looking at photos, it's often difficult to tell colors because of the lighting on the subject, and the resulting shading. With photography, it's all about light. You have to be careful judging colors, or even if something is colored at all, from photographs.
And as we all know, this is also true when we view things with our own eyes. Among other things, colors with shading on them often look black.
A model train example is the well-known history of the black Santa Fe warbonnet F-3. It originated with an individual at Lionel illustrating a photo he had of the real F-3s, and in the particular photo he was looking at, the lighting was such that the stainless steel sides of the engines looked black.
