There are lots of people who like clean trains. They like to see brandnew paint jobs sparkling in the sunshine. I'm not one of them. Maybe it is because I grew up on the New Haven mainline in the 1960s, but when I think of trains I think: dirt, soot, rust and fading paint. Those were the way trains looked when I first started watching them and after Penn Central took over I encountered my first patch jobs. So when I see a patch job in the modern world, well, I am transported right back to the nostalgic days of my youth. If you throw in some faded paint, rust and dirt, well you have pretty much made my day. This is why I probably like these two characters I ran into on a sunny Sunday in February 2009 heading west out of Buffalo.
A couple of unique beasts if ever there were any.
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