Gay Engines

This is the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's centenary year -- good cause, it might be said, for the gay decorating of a score of new, clean locomotives that snuggled their cowcatchers to the rails last week The engines were painted olive green, the color of B. & O. passenger coaches. Besides using green for the black paint, that has been standard with locomotive users since 1878, the painter striped each machine with gold and red bands. Also, on each cab, in three-inch gilt letters, was the name of a U. S. President, from President Washington to President Arthur./- This was no imitation of custom long obsolete in the U. S. but yet current in Great Britain, of naming locomotives. Nor was the festive painting a symptom of giddiness on the part of President Daniel Willard. Names and paints were part of a carefully considered policy to give individuality and therefore distinction to B. & 0. trains.

/-Chester Alan Arthur (1830-86), New York widower-politician, polished, unfastidious, who was nominated for Vice President as running mate of James Abram Garfield to mollify and obtain the political support of Spoilsman Roscoe Conkling and his gangs of "Stalwarts." When Garfield died from Assassin Charles Guiteau's bullet, Arthur served for three years as "the only man of the world, in the best sense of the term, who has ever occupied the White House."