Charlie,

I will offer some popular wisdom about B&O colors and I hope to hear
some alternate wisdom. My pre-1945 color is based on a Delano photo
where an early scheme (cap dome) M-15 appears very brown. Also check
out this web page for lettering diagrams that can give general
lettering information (they are specfically for the M-26 but translate
to other B&O boxcars) http://borhs.org/Logos/bo_font_logo.html. This
webpage gives an idea about how the lettering changed over time in the
steam era. Many B&O historians feel that the ever changing freight car
brown color often mentioned was very brown before 1945 when a new
lettering scheme was introduced and changed to a much more red-brown
color. But we do not know if a change to a more red brown color changed
happened at exactly the same time. It appears that cars lettered with
the post 1945 "Linking Thirteen States" were painted with a much more
red brown color. For my modeling I use Polly Scale Boxcar Red
(sometimes with a little brown added) for B&O pre 1945 lettering
schemes and Polly Scale Zinc Chromate for 1945 to 1963 B&O lettering
schemes. So far this has not been critisized by other B&O folks, but we
are all looking for more information. They weathered pretty
differently, one becoming darker, one becoming more red-pink. In the
May/June 2006 B&O Modeler magazine I discussed this and offered some
black and white prototype photos of M-15e's and color model photos of
my Westerfield kits.

Regards,
Bruce D. Griffin
Summerfield, NC