Elsewhere someone was complaining about the colorful paint schemes applied to some American locomotives in "preservation". This is a problem that affects not only American locomotives, but locomotives elsewhere. I have a modest example here:
If you look at the side of the cab you can see a funny anomaly. The numbers on the side of the cab say Er 85-63 (Er in cyrillic doesn't look quite like Er in English). But this is actually Er 785-63 an aging workhorse of a locomotive that spent its later years as a stationary boiler at the Railway Shed in Ungeny, Moldova. In 2004 it was pulled from the deadline and restored as you see it.
So why the number change? I've talked with one of the gentlemen who was involved in doing the work and have the answer, such as it is. They ordered pretty raised letters to put the number on the side of the cab. In the real world, they were just stenciled on. But (wait for it) ... somebody ordered the wrong size letters. They couldn't fit the entire number in the space available, so they simply decided to throw away the 7's figuring no one would ever know the difference.
The colorful paint scheme was supposed to promote rail travel as the locomotive is now in front of a depot. He said it hadn't done much to accomplish that but that it annoyed the Russians, so all-in-all he considered it a net plus.
The billboard above and behind the locomotive Says at the top "Good Trip!" in both Romanian and Russian. The bottom text is "The Railways of Moldova".
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