That's cool. I have never seen the locomotive. I have two of these one is listed on eBay, so I thought I'd try this one here. The other one, the stripes are the opposite colors. the red is where the blue is and the blue is where the red is. Strange.
I dont think its a mistake. try and imagine it being a ribbon laying across the top and draping over each side in a diagonal fashion. if you look at it from the top view it would line up correctly looking like its on opposite sides. For instance the red stripe is beneath the cupola on both sides.