The Hammock Papers: Aesthetic.

10 July 2019

Aesthetic.

The steam locomotive was the most complex and highest technological achievement of the 19th century. Rolling symbols of power and prosperity, they reflected the wealth and stability of the railroad as well as the superiority of the companies that built them. Locomotives from the finest firms in America embodied the best in steam innovation, mechanical as well as aesthetic. Locomotive design was a marriage of function, form, and colour.

Today, we model and research the locomotives of a bygone age arguing the merits of one valve gear above another, or becoming obsessive about the number and type of boiler stays, rivets, and number of spokes on a wheel. Seldom does the discussion of colour and decoration come into it. In contrast, when we speak of notable architectural achievements, the colour and finish of the building is as important as the structural and functional design. The designer considers function and aesthetics equally important; discussing one without the other is not a full analysis of the design at all.

Like architecture, a locomotive's mechanical and aesthetic features embody the spirit of the era. To accurately research, model and analyse the locomotive design as the original designers had conceived, I can only implore that this discussion should include the colour scheme and decoration as an integral part of the design. And to do otherwise will only short change the locomotive design and the designer's intent.

This paper serves as an overview of the Baldwin systems for decoration and paint as applied to US Built locomotives, using documentation from the Baldwin Locomotive Works archives and historians' advice on American painting standards.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL