On Dec 29, 2010, at 9:08 AM, Ray Breyer wrote:

Paint "brown", weather to taste:

http://www.life.com/image/50653112
http://www.life.com/image/50653040
http://www.life.com/image/50653022
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsac/item/fsa1992000761/PP/
resource/

Four steam era NYC boxcars (the first three all taken in the same
hour of the same day), four different "colors".

Ray, your point is well made, and can't be made often enough. Age,
weathering, lighting, all influence the appearance of paint color
dramatically. Not to mention the size of the object and the eye of
the beholder. However....

Paint matching DOES NOT MATTER.

Now you're over-generalizing. The color you start with does matter,
up to a point. In the era I model, for example, Pennsy, B&O, and UP
oxide red were much more red than, say, Santa Fe or Southern mineral
brown. Modelers do need to start with a color more or less close to
that of the prototype, though somewhat lighter to compensate for the
fact that indoor lighting is never as intense as natural sunlight.

However, having said that, I'll agree with you that all the fussing
which breaks out periodically on this list about exact color matching
is a monumental waste of time and effort. For every model, there's a
commercial paint color, whether in water-based or solvent-based model
paints, that's close enough, even if you're modeling a fresh-from-the-
paint-shop car. Having built 200+ freight car models over the years,
I can't recall that I ever mixed paint to get a color match. And
I've never had anyone suggest that the colors on my models were "wrong."

Richard Hendrickson