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  2. Railroad colors and the demise of Floquil

Re: Railroad colors and the demise of Floquil

RandyH <hees@...>
 

Pantone (PMS) and Munsel systems are commonly used by those of us doing restoration feasibility studies, but there are issues.

Pantone was developed for printer's ink... and until recently when extended to paint (and fabric) was too limited for what we do... It has gotten better recently... but the best match for "pullman color" is still a version of black.

Munsel, developed for architects covered a bigger range of color, but is not common, so while it may accurately describe a color, it is difficult to make it useful in the real world.

Alternately, we can preserve samples of materiel, either "drift cards", Samples of original material with paint, or match cards made using modern artist paints, on a stable media... this preserves accurate information, but is hard to disseminate (you need to have access to the physical sample).

So, in any case, there are two issues, 1) accurately recording the color, and 2) making that information available.

A color formula is not a good way of describing a color... it will always be subject to changes or abandonment of the paint system in question.

Randy Hees
www.pacificng.com
www.rypn.org
www.spcrr.org

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 12:03 PM, Don Burn <burn@...> wrote:
With all the discussion of the demise of Floquil it got me wondering has
anyone ever considered recording railroad colors in a paint independent
way? The latest announcement is not the first time we have lost a paint
line, and with concerns about lacquers in some places we may be barred more
options in the future. Even before Floquil's demise the concerns about
color drift of the product have been expressed on this forum.

So the question is has anyone ever considered Pantone or some other
independent scheme for denoting the colors. I am particularly thinking of
folks with paint chips or other data that represents the real color.

I realize that a large number of factors from fading and weathering of the
prototype, the type of film that was used to take the photo, all the way to
the type of lighting on a layout impact our color perception but having a
basis to start would help.

A lot of us base our formula on an article about building a model of a
particular car, or someone's published mix for a particular railroads
color. With the loss of Floquil a lot of these sources have been
invalidated, and as we build up new approaches perhaps figuring something
not dependant on a paint manufacturer should be considered.

Don Burn




--
*Thomas j Cataldo*


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