I was just watching this: https://youtu.be/QtPTD-QInks
Okay, I know this is a Chinese steam locomotive, but as they had controls on the opposite sides of the backhead as US steam did (I've never seen why that is, though). What I'd like to know is, did they modify them to the 'correct' sides when they did this nice conversion to a New Haven look?
I've searched online but couldn't find anything that talks about this specifically.

Unless I'm mistaken, the SYs that came to the US had controls set for right hand drive to start with. But I also thought that a lot of "modern" Chinese steam was set for right hand drive to start with...

That was the problem with running US steam in Korea in the 1950's. The Korean RR was built by the Japanese and ran on the left. Korean steam locomotives were left hand drive. Imported US steam (including that Erie Pacific) gave the engineer difficulty seeing signals.

The Koreans were also exposed to US Army SW8's and didn't want steam, not even new left hand drive steam; they wanted diesels.

Phil Mulligan