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have heard the horror stories from friends working trackside
look, train good but one thing train not is clean. every time on WTYP we show a British railway scene I joke about Britain just looking like that but it’s honestly a train thing rather than a Britain thing
biggest offender is obviously coal dust, which will persist for as long as we’re moving coal by rail, but even without that you’re gonna get dirt, rust, oil stains, wildlife that gets hit by trains, etc etc etc
diesel trains of course the worst off
it’s interesting because one of the ways to gauge this stuff is how it’s applied to colour theory. railway model makers have cultivated extensive selections of dirt shades, my favourite being the evocatively named ‘sleeper grime’
and outwith the desert of the real it’s a huge consideration for how trains get liveried - it’s why you go for dark colours on freight trains, like blue or black (British Rail), dark red (EWS), or dark green (Freightliner)
what’s interesting is that if you look at this EWS Class 66 you can see that the dirt arranges in patterns - dark uncombusted fuel on the roof, lighter trackside grime down the sides, then darker again on the wheels and bogies
when British Rail divided freight operations into sectors, one innovative thing they came up with was a livery intended to camouflage this as much as possible, called Triple Grey, that attempts to match that pattern. I think it works very well
