Dennis and all: Although no well-printed Munsell color book is
inexpensive, for less than $650 ($125-149, sometimes literally
dirt-cheap for a used copy) you can get the USDA Soil Conservation
Service Munsell field book, which has durable, washable pages with
chips for 322 earth tones. The color ranges covered include yellows,
tans, oranges, reds, browns, purples, greys (many hues) and
near-blacks (" "). It's heavily concentrated in browns, tans and
reds. It will get you squarely in the ballpark of most steam-era
freight car colors, and the chip sample is intended to provide enough
resolution in most of these ranges to allow visual interpolation to
describe fairly good Munsell color descriptions for in-between colors.

Though it might not suffice or laboratory paint preparation, it can
serve as a useful field manual for most of us retrograde freight car
enthusiasts. Still, even at this price one has to be pretty
dedicated...or perhaps be married to an understanding soil scientist.

http://www.forestry-suppliers.com/product_pages/View_Catalog_Page.asp?mi=3078

Chris Frissell
Polson, MT

--- In STMFC@..., "Dennis Storzek" <destorzek@...> wrote:

List,

I did a bit more reading about the Munsell color system this weekend,
because it does seem to be the best language available in which to
discuss color. ....The color standard for the Munsell color system

is the Munsell Book

of Colors, such as the one available here:

http://www.cspoutdoors.com/muboofcogled.html

A mere $625.