Looking at the post-restoration pictures and videos of Milwaukee Road 261, I've noticed that her off-set red light has been removed. Does anyone know why they removed it?
if you look at the pictures on Train's News Wire, the front air hoses are also missing. Since this was a "test" run, items that could be damaged, or not necessary, were left off to facilitate field repairs.
Here is the frontal picture from the News Wire:
http://trn.trains.com/en/Railroad%20News/News%20Wire/2013/04/Milwaukee%20Road%20261%20makes%20test%20runs%20preparations%20continue%20for%20Duluth%20excursion.aspx
It wasn't original equipment if memory serves, and some of us 261 fans were speculating the other night that it might be part of an effort to return the engine to an earlier appearance. I seem to recall the current smokebox front is also not original and there is likely nothing they can do about that.
I'm looking forward to seeing the engine in action in a couple of weeks!
Dave Nelson
I had great chances to see the 261 both on static display and in action this last weekend between the Twin Cities and Duluth It looks and sounds great.
The "new look" without the red light on the smokebox front does take some getting used to - a bit like encountering a familiar face of someone who has laser corrective surgery and no longer wears glasses.
dknelson It wasn't original equipment if memory serves, and some of us 261 fans were speculating the other night that it might be part of an effort to return the engine to an earlier appearance. I seem to recall the current smokebox front is also not original and there is likely nothing they can do about that.
Consensus is that the light was applied sometime 1949-1950.
A thread on RyPN in November had a picture of the 'new' front, without the light and apparently before it was installed. It is dated 1954 but one poster thought this was a transpose of 1945, as there are no mounting holes visible for the light bracket. Unlike the F6s, the bell 'as-built' was in the offset position... even with the original round door! I hear stories that a center-mounted bell (as on the F6s up to the mid-Forties) would not clear something, perhaps clearance on an 18-degree curve, in the Chicago station approaches. There is probably not much to the idea that the bell was offset because it simplifies hoist location for pulling superheater tubes. It was certainly not offset to clear the Mars light.
At least some of the F6s received this same ... dare I call it Pennsy-like? ... "beauty treatment" -- at least one by early October 1946. (Picture in Stagner's book on North American Hudsons, p.44). There, the offset bell was clearly done to give room for the light, on a smokebox front which kept a conventional round door.
The 'new' smokebox front is similar to that of the 'Selkirk front end (see Lima's L4 class on NYC) -- IIRC, that outer 'door' was designed to facilitate tube cleaning. It is not the original front (which was round and rather attractive -- there's a 1944 picture showing it over at Chaski Railfan, in case anyone disbelieves this).
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