Late Saturday night… A story about paint archeology

It’s a rare weekend with few job related responsibilities…  And I end up at work… not for work, but for other things… for all the right reasons…  A friend shows up with a 1875 locomotive headlight, and permission to sand through and explore the various layers of paint…  The friend, a museum curator, expert in Victorian paint and industrial design is in position of the headlight from Glenbrook… a locomotive owned by and undergoing restoration by the Nevada State Railroad Museum… He is doing a paint study… I participated in a similar study for a 1868 passenger car owned by the museum recently… We sand, discuss expectations, findings, and such…

But first, Jim hasn’t visited the farm before… (Ardenwood Historic Farm, a joint project of East Bay Regional Parks and the City of Fremont, 210 acres of a once 12,000 acre Gold Rush era grain ranch) we explore… the farm yard, the butterfly grove, the house, and the new railroad building… then set up a table outside (in bright sun) and attack the headlight with sand paper, 3in1 oil, magnifying glasses, and enthusiasm.  We are professionals, you should get out of our way… 

We are looking for evidence of 19^th century decoration… we fail, or in reality, the headlight fails us.  We sand windows in likely spots… we find primer, black, bright orange, with a stripe of yellow orange, and more black… There is a yellow layer in places… but no layers of wine, or rich brown, no decoration or other expected (documented) 19^th century colors… Somebody stripped the old paint off, circa 1938, and has erased the evidence…  At least that is our story… And we are what you call “experts”… We do find traces of wine or maybe brown… The likely original or second color, but not wine with decoration as hoped for… The decoration is gone, likely erased by a skilled painter preparing the headlight for repainting after the locomotive left service…  We have failed to find 19^th century paint, but Jim has a statement about the search and lack of physical forensic evidence for his report.

During the search, park guests stop by to ask questions, to find out what we are doing… they seem interested… They have not heard of paint archeology… they peer through magnifying glasses at paint samples exposed by sand paper and knife…  Their (young) children dream of Blue engines named Thomas but don’t see blue…

Back home, hours later… after dark… a fire on the hearth… a baked pasta for dinner, the 49’ers win… I am working on the planning for a  cruise vacation in a few days (canyoning on Dominica!)…  now late… a glass of cheap red wine at hand, I blog…