Thank you very much for the compliment John. I am most flattered!
Unfortunately, the effect of pin-striped spokes do have a bit of a "Circus Wagon Look", and that was quite antithetical to the "Speedlined" (O. Kuhler's term) Flash Gordon affect of the late 1930's "Art-Deco" approach he used. This itself, was garish in a differing way from the aforementioned. Large areas of solid color were used to de-emphasize the eye-slowing, (over the overly intricate, such as valve gear, boiler accessories, exhaust steam injectors, compressors etc.) and yes, even driving wheel spokes. Think "Scullin Disc" on a Dreyfus-N.Y.C. J3a and you'll see Kuhler's goal with only simple paint being available.
Here is a close-up of NYO&W No. 405 's drivers, taken when immediately moved from the "AV" paint shop in June 1938, it didn't even have a fire in it at this point in time. A late friend of mine, then age 11 was in the cab that day and was disappointed when he pulled the whistle chord, and nothing happened as there wasn't any boiler pressure.
The image is a contact print and was shot by O&W Engineman DeForest Diver on large format orthographic B&W film. This film renders the grays differently from how we perceive them. The deep and intense "Ontario Maroon" actually appears darker than the adjacent black painted areas of the trailing and tender trucks as well as the air tank etc. In this photo, it is very plain the tires had that one inch orange stripe around their perimeter as well as the small orange ring around each axle hub. But clearly, no spoke pinstripes.
The paint was there to give the illusion of a "solid disc". Even the coaches and twin observation cars had a black panel painted through their horizontal window areas with three one inch orange stripes over the maroon sides below the window areas.
As for 3 rail, I am aware. Just look at MTH's O&W "Mountaineer" cars as they do indeed match the above paint description reasonably well. I only wished they'd done an adequate job on an engine, hence my contacting Weaver. Decades ago, I personally handed Mike Wolf several sets of my own "Mountaineer" decals, which MTH based their artwork upon for their cars. And just as with Otto Kuhler's work on the Southern's 1941 "Speedlined" Ps-4 for the "Tennessean," I too didn't get paid! ---As for me writing books, well, there is that color one on the NYO&W. Thanks again.
