I love the Pennsy's streamlined era passenger paint scheme of red/maroon with gold pinstripes. Tasteful, simple elegance. I can't remember its official title, although I think it was facetiously referred to as "Rustoleum" in the PC era. I believe "Brunswick" was reserved for the green (which appears black to most of us) used on freight units.
I have an old, American Flyer model (if you can call those A.C. Gilbert tin plate trains "models") of a K-5 (?) Pacific that may be older than me.
Gerry Mulligan (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Mulligan)
I believe the late jazz artist and composer Gerry Mulligan had a relative who worked on the Pennsy, which would have inspired the title of one of his compositions, "K-5 Pacific."
You Tube notes:
From his 1972 album entitled "The Age Of Steam" issued on A&M label. With a great band including Tom Scott, Bud Shank, Bob Brookmeyer, Harry Edison and more.
I think
The Age of Steam is an appropriate title for the album. The rhythm of
K-5 Pacific reflects a train in motion.
More railroad connections: According to Wikipedia, as a child Mulligan lived for a while in Reading, Pennsylvania. In June 1988, he was invited to be the first Composer-in-Residence at the
Glasgow International Jazz Festival and was commissioned to write a work, which he titled
The Flying Scotsman. In 1991,
Here is a video of The Flying Scotsman performed by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.
You Tube notes:
Brilliant performance of The Flying Scotsman at the 1990 International Jazz Festival in Bern Switzerland … featuring Gerry Mulligan (bs), Bill Charlap (p), Dean Johnson (b) and David Ratajczak (d). The first festival took place in 1976 and has been thrilling jazz fans every year since.
That concludes our Covid-19 quarantine inspired threadjack. We return you to the regularly posted thread.