The Minuteman is Boston & Maine's commemorative locomotive, and it's a Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Stars bursting all over the place and more stripes than you can shake a stick at, and there's also a nifty Minuteman silhouette right up front. Even the horns are painted a patriotic blue.

And just in case you missed the Americana flair of the train, the nice folks at the post card company added some extra bunting to the edge of the card. Just for good measure.

It's really not fair to put Katy's number 200 after the Minuteman.

If you hadn't seen the Boston & Maine entry, you would have liked this a lot.

This Norfolk & Western SD-45 is one of those that we really should like better than we do.

It's painted red, white & blue– with the colors laid out in a distinctly flag-like pattern. It's got the thirteen stars arranged in the popular circular pattern. It's been renumbered 1776. Heck, even the brass bell on front looks like it was polished five minutes ago.

But in the end, it's neither spectacular nor horrible– which means it's just average.

This pair of Pittsburgh & Shawmut coal haulers are also neither spectacular nor horrible.

But there are two of them, and they are cute, and that's worth a lot.

The folks at the Shawmut line put in the extra effort to renumber and name these little cuties: number 1776 is the Betsy Ross and number 1775 is the Indenpence.