#obviously raymond loewy and henry dreyfuss are confounding factors in some of this

[unshrinkingviolets]

I'm making this its own post bc @penn-central-official has suffered enough, but I cannot stop thinking about Light Mike(s). The thing is that I don't have the right kind of autism for most railroad history but I do almost have the right kind of autism for art history. The Pennsy took a standard USRA design that seems to have been little-altered by other railroads and said "Hmm no we're customizing this, we might not have built it but damned if it's going to be obvious. You're an L2 now" (or words to that effect)(why though)(is it purely out of maintaining your STANDARD RAILROAD OF THE WORLD image?)(is it cheaper to put the generator on the smokebox? What gives?). It makes me want to do a survey of all the Light Mikes across their respective railroads and examine the material circumstances that would lead to their being customized or not (especially with regards to the 600ish copies of the original design that were built later).

This is part of a larger thought I have occasionally about aesthetics and the steam locomotive - to what degree are they deliberate, and to what degree are they a byproduct of the mechanical design demands and the material circumstances under which the locomotive was built? How much does somebody like Oliver Bullied make stylistic choices vs. engineering ones(is there even a difference with that guy)? Could one identify American locomotives based purely on their "look" when scrubbed of identifying marks (oh hey it's the Pennsy again)? What happens to aesthetics when you really go hard on standardization and build, I don't know, the Chinese QJ class or the Indian Railways WP (to say nothing of the overlaps in political spheres of influence and nasty circumstances making certain types ubiquitous [lookin at you, Kriegslok])(that may not be as much of an aesthetic thing)?