Santa Fe Warbonnet chief logo and direction of travel

An interesting issue, Bob. It may not really matter, but I like the Indian chief facing forward on my Santa Fe engines and cars. However, on a new MTH R50B express reefer, it faces backward on both sides. So, I changed the direction of the train on my layout, so that at least on one side, it's facing forward.

I wish the manufacturers would keep this in mind when they put Santa Fe's Indian chief logo on all engines and cars.

Vern,

Am I not understanding something here?  In your picture, the engine is to the left and I assume the engine is at the front of the train since express cars usually sit between the engines and the passenger cars.  So, doesn't the Warbonnet Chief face front in your picture?

Chuck

FWIW, I've seen pictures of the real stuff with the logo on some car, couldn't really tell what it was, with the tail pointing towards the back, and another with the tail pointing to the front.

@PRR1950 posted:

Vern,

Am I not understanding something here?  In your picture, the engine is to the left and I assume the engine is at the front of the train since express cars usually sit between the engines and the passenger cars.  So, doesn't the Warbonnet Chief face front in your picture?

Chuck

Right Chuck. In the picture, the chief is facing forward, the direction the train is going. But I had to turn the entire train around to go that direction, so the Chief faces forward. On the other side of the car, the Chief faces backward. In other words, MTH didn’t make the warbonnet Chief facing forward on both sides. 😔

Prototypically, Santa Fe had no intent about which way the chief faced on those Warbonnet chief cars, including that caboose, because these cars are make-believe. But on their engines, the chief would face forward. On some of the older E units, which had the logo on the engine, it faced the front of the engine. I've seen ABBA sets of F units where the leading B unit, which had the logo, had it facing forward, toward the lead A unit. The next B unit had its chief logo facing toward the rear, behind the trailing A unit, so it's facing foward with respect to the rear-facing A.

Even if Santa Fe actually had these make-believe cars, in real life the logo would be facing different directions. The railroads had no thought to decor with respect to freight cars. There's no time or facility or purpose for turning a freight car around. When freight cars are being switched and trains are being assembled, the cars will be facing different directions, depending on how the came into a yard and were assembled in a train and then left the yard. Just happenstance. In many cases, that may have applied to B units as well. So I wouldn't worry about logo direction, unless you just want to assemble a perfectly symmetrical train.

If MTH put the logo on an engine facing one direction on one side and facing the other direction on the other side, that's a screw-up by MTH.

General Custer and his troops definitely wanted the chief going away!

Gunny

Good one Gunny

russ