I'd agree with Jeff, if the PMS numbers can be found for any of the various
railroad colors, the "book" with color chips is already available. The
Photoshop idea has merit too, although scanners are going to vary, and I
wonder if the accuracy will vary so much that we're back to the same
variations in scanned paint samples as we are with the prototype photos.

Jerry (glad to now be on this list!) Michels

In a message dated 11/16/01 3:56:51 PM Eastern Standard Time,
ted_culotta@... writes:

don't put too much stock in exact color
matches. 1,000 cars in a given series built by/for a
specific road probably had color variances right out
of the shops.

Troo. A coupla years ago I read a 1920s industry book from Simmons Boardman
callled The Painting of Railway Equipment. It was intended to teach shop
employees the how's and why's of painting. It explained that paint was made
up of two things: the pigment (powdered), and the vehicle (the liquid in
which the pigment is suspended). It explained the various vehicles (linseed
oil, turpentine, etc.,) and the properties of each and its effect on the
drying, and it listed all of the pigments by name and its resulting color,
and how the colors tended to weather, and the basic recipes for each color.

Powdered pigments were bought by the bag, like cement or flour, and in the
quantities required for rail cars the pigment was added by the scoop or cup
or shovel, or even handful, I would imagine. Remember, too, that railroad
shops were industrial workplaces that hired industrial workers with or
without education or skill or intellect. Oxides were common and cheap, blues
and reds were rarer and expensive. Yellow was common, as were some greens
(Zinc chromate?).

Bottom line is -- and I didn't think much about this until reading the book
-- back in our favorite era paint wasn't purchased pre-mixed by computers in
neat little cans or barrels or drums. It was made from powdered pigments that
could be bought from many companies who competed to sell pigment, and many
variations in color were common between them. While I'm sure most bigger
shops had people who did nothing else but mix paint and they got pretty good
at it, the chances are also good that a lot of folks weren't critical with
the pigment or the vehicle, especially on the short lines.

I'm anal about paint colors, but I'm tending these days to think of boxcar
red colors in their relationships to the other boxcar reds. Some cars were
brown, some were burgundy brown, some were oxide, some were a reddish oxide,
some were orange-ish oxide, and so on.

While restoring a Lackawanna caboose in 1999 we found a bolt that had
original paint on its head that had been covered and protected since its 1954
birthday. We matched the new paint to that exactly, via computer and in
Centari 5000 (the latest in polyeurethane coatings). I painted a few samples
and compared them with photos in various light on different days before
painting the car, just to be sure. This new paint had all the personality of
the old -- the color looked completely different with and without sun and
based on the viewing angle; this often led many to think different cabooses
were different colors.

The weekend we were painting the actual caboose, I assembled the basic bodies
on a few IMWX '37 AAR cars and brought them down for painting. Granted, most
of the spray went into the air, and the paint did go on a little heavy, but
weathered up and detailed they'll blend well. It's nice to have the actual
color on a few cars, one of which right now is fully decaled. But it's
interesting to see how different the color looks in a basement in the even
flourescent lighting without the shadows and color of the outdoor sun or the
atmostpheric perspective of viewing the car from a distance.

A lot of us might be spending a lot of effort getting paint shades closer
than they need to be.

....Mike

List,

The thread on freight car colors prompts me to offer this thought:

A really useful book would be one that consists of nothing but
color samples from the freight cars of every railroad that an example
could be found of. Color samples are shown in the PFE book, and I
know that the Southern Pacific printed a series of "drift cards" that
displayed the colors for their equipment. I'm guessing (hoping?) that
other companies did the same thing.

Now, before there's a dogpile with me on the bottom, let me say that
I'm fully aware of the endless discussion on how lighting, weathering
and your own eyeballs make color rendition a subjective thing. And I
know that drift cards show "just out of the shop" colors. Even so,
I think that a color sample that gave a close approximation of, say,
Pennsy "Box Car Red" would be a great help to those of us not so versed
on this subject. Let me give just one example of why this is needed.

At the NEB&W web site, specifically the Guide to Tichy Freight Car Kits,
John Nehrich talks about the NC&StL 40' flat cars. I quote: "These were
painted a shade of box car red". Okay, what shade? Since I have several
of these kits, this is not an idle question. Don't get me wrong, I am
very, very thankful that John has put this information together, but I
need a little more help with this. Do I make the red lighter? Darker?
Does it matter that much? To me it does, and this is where some kind of
color sample would be really useful.

Is this kind of book possible? Or a waste of time? Your thoughts, please.

Shawn Beckert

I would second Shawn's request for a book on a freight (see Richard, I got it write this time) car color chips. Hawkins-et-al do have a very usefull chart of "freight car red" color paint formulas in RP Cyc #3 that offers a mixes for range of reds from bright oxide (think B&O) to brown's (ATSF) and lists the railroads that used them. In fact, it was the information in this chart that lead to Branchline's five (now six, soon seven) shades of "boxcar red".

One of the best efforts in reproducing color chips has to be the New Haven Railroad Historical & Technical Association's (NHRHTA) "New Haven Color Guide which is nothing more than a loose leaf 3 ring binder with 8 1/2 x 11" pages, each with a large area of color on both a glossy and satin surface and notes on what equipment was painted which color. Don't think sheen makes a difference? I would swear that the Warm Orange page has two different colors on it! While this hardly makes for a great coffee table book, the information is invaluable.

However, one of the difficulties of color reproduction in any book is the requirement for the publisher to keep very tight control on ink color and density.... read an expensive book to print let alone research and write. I question how many would pay the neccesary price for such an undertaking... Put me down for one anyway.

Bill Schneider

In the era of the internet, it seems strange to be talking about "someone"
writing a book which frankly sounds like a financial loss. We can post
color pictures on the web. We can post "drift cards". Okay, there are no
quarantees that the colors would be true. One of the frurstrations I had
with all the wonderful work that Ed Hawkins did with matching colors to
Floquil paints is that Floquil shifts the colors radically everytime someone
in the factory hiccups.
On the other hand, it seems that if for instance, if several of us were
to scan in different colors that were reproducible (like the cyan on MR's
masthead), and then used PhotoShop to give a numerical analysis, we could
figure out how my scanner varies from another one. And then match the color
drift cards relative to these fixed shades, at least it would be a start.
Color is so subjective, but it would be nice to get, say, B&O cars redder
than what shade one uses for Pennsy, and so on - the key being relative,
since absolute seems not possible (different lighting conditions for a
layout rather than sunlight, on and on).
The point, anyway, is that given some of the problems of color on the
web, it still should be possible to do something now instead of waiting
until "someone" gets around to writing a book. And one color photo of a
flat in question would go a long way to helping someone decide what color to
use. But I can't post drift cards or color photos if I don't have them or
don't have permission to post them. (In other words, it would be nice to
have this information in a book or web site, but the information may not
exist.)
But speaking of a book, I'd love to see a book of builder's photos from
a given decade or period of time (say, 1920-25), ALL photos from that time,
even if the book has to be split to
a smaller period of time to make it practical. (Or a web site, but I don't
have access to the builder's collections - hint, hint!.)
- John

Bill Schneider writes:

I would second Shawn's request for a book on a freight (see Richard, I got

it write this time) car color chips. Hawkins-et-al do have a very usefull
chart of "freight car red" color paint formulas in RP Cyc #3 that offers a
mixes for range of reds from bright oxide (think B&O) to brown's (ATSF) and
lists the railroads that used them.

First, I applaud the concept of the book suggested. I also think the chart
in the RP Cyc #3 and, indeed, all the RP Cycs are outstanding stuff for us
modelers. However....now stepping up on my soap box........

While the color of paint used by different railroads on various frt cars
was, no doubt, different, let us not forget that...due to many
factors....explained many times in many forums...the same paint can produce
different end result colors. For those doubting this, merely refer to the
cover of MM, May 1992, which shows many different shades of some kind of
brownish red paint splashed on C&NW box cars during or prior to WW2. There
are many more examples of this and they have been addressed many times in
the past. This comment is only to remind you guys that there is a margin of
error when color is referenced. In fact, I commented in another forum that
the manufacturers have not agreed about the color of UP Armor Yellow. In
fact again, P2K has used at least three shades of the stuff on their diesel
locomotives [ whatever they are ]. To put this in perceptive, UP cannot get
it right either, using several different shades...or using a paint that
changes color easily...on their full sized cars.

In fact, it was the information in this chart that lead to Branchline's

five (now six, soon seven) shades of "boxcar red".

Certainly the correct thing to do. There is no doubt that UP box car colors
were much "redder" than those of the ATSF. However, I would argue that there
is no single "correct" color for a UP box car...or for a Santa Fe one. The
good part of all this is that it's tough to screw up.

Getting down from my soap box and you guys can wake up now.

Mike Brock....hope I don't get banned....

On Nov 16, 2:51pm, Bill Schneider wrote:

Subject: Re: [STMFC] Freight Car Colors

However, one of the difficulties of color reproduction in any book is

the requirement for the publisher to keep very tight control on ink color
and density.... read an expensive book to print let alone research and
write. I question how many would pay the neccesary price for such an
undertaking... Put me down for one anyway.

Bill Schneider

Bill,

There was a question a while back on the UP list regarding paint
colors. Aside from the usual comments about color perception and stupid
statements that "color is subjective" [it is NOT; it is easily
measurable], someone asked if there was a Pantone match for the UP colors.

For those who don't know (and I'm no expert), the Pantone Matching
System (PMS) provides color standards that are available in a printed book
that you may find in a good art supply store. Because the PMS colors are
STANDARD, by matching to these colors, it is easy to convey to printers,
paint manufacturers, etc. what color you're really talking about.

The hard part is for the historical societies to come up with the
PMS numbers for the colors used by the railroads (somebody claims that UP
Armour Yellow and Harbor Mist Grey are PMS 116 and PMS 10, respectively,
and that Scotchlite red is PMS 185.)

Regards,

-Jeff

--
Jeff Aley jaley@...
DPG Chipsets Product Engineering
Intel Corporation, Folsom, CA
(916) 356-3533

From: Jeff Aley - GCD PE <jaley@...>

For those who don't know (and I'm no expert), the Pantone Matching
System (PMS) provides color standards that are available in a printed book
that you may find in a good art supply store. Because the PMS colors are
STANDARD, by matching to these colors, it is easy to convey to printers,
paint manufacturers, etc. what color you're really talking about.

The Pantone system does offer advantages -- an easily reproduced standard
colour system, but you'll also find that you will have to approximate
colours to some degree. There simply aren't enough Pantone colours to match
everything precisely.

Stafford Swain noted in his CN colour study: it was kind of like using a
ruler in which the lines weren't close enough together (or words to that
effect).

--
Ian Cranstone
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
lamontc@... (note change: was lamontc@...)

The Pantone system does offer advantages -- an
easily reproduced standard
colour system, but you'll also find that you will
have to approximate
colours to some degree. There simply aren't enough
Pantone colours to match
everything precisely.

If someone wanted to take the time and effort, the
colors could be matched to their six color "web-ready"
colors that are in web site development software
packages (at least they're in Adobe GoLive). Then you
would have an exact match that would only vary by the
variance in one's monitor (gee... should you look at
it at an angle, straight on, .... I'll let someone
else go down that rat hole)

By the way, I don't put too much stock in exact color
matches. 1,000 cars in a given series built by/for a
specific road probably had color variances right out
of the shops. Couple that with the fact that some
wintered in Minnesota while others got rained on in
Pittsburgh (no acid in the rain there in the 1940's,
huh?) while another spent the better part of the
winter in Florida... and all this is just for one
winter. The variance between two cars that came out
of the shops at the same time is staggering. Just
show some variety in your weathering and call it a
day.

Ted

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List,

The thread on freight car colors prompts me to offer this thought:

A really useful book would be one that consists of nothing but
color samples from the freight cars of every railroad that an example
could be found of....

See what you started? You DESERVE to be on the bottom of the dog pile.
And how come you always want someone else to do a book? When do we get an
SSW book from you?

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

I knew I was gonna get hit:

See what you started? You DESERVE to be on the bottom
of the dog pile. And how come you always want someone
else to do a book? When do we get an SSW book from you?

A) I don't know diddly about writing and publishing. It's
a wonder they kept me around to edit the SPH&TS Society
newsletter as long as they did...

B) The day I can ever get enough accurate and complete data
to do an article (never mind a book) on Cotton Belt cars
I will make the attempt. I don't anticipate that happening
any time soon. Talk about an information vacuum...

Shawn Beckert

Here are some color data I scanned a year or two ago. The RBG color can be
loaded into MS Paint as a custom color. The letters MF mean modelflex
paint; most other colors are floquil. The last two lines are from photos of
old cars. If one wants to bother you can experiment with different ratios to
represent blended paints. I found Corel Draw has a nice feature that does
this quickly. Of course, as I explained in earlier, the gamma of monitor is
vastly less than what the eye perceives... and of course the monitor may
have poor color presentation anyway, but the benefit as I see it is to get
the drift -- is the color kinda yelowish, is it a light or dark, is the
green pronounced? etc. etc., and then go from there.

R G B

SPRAY Caboose Red 195 59 63
STD. Pantone 506CV 111 54 64
STD. Pantone 478CV 122 65 42
STD. Pantone 477CV 100 56 38
SPRAY Rust 165 95 59
SPRAY Srr 117 76 74
SPRAY Oxide 118 59 53
SPRAY Zinc 140 72 69
SPRAY WC Maroon 78 16 29
SPRAY Scalecoat BCR 108 67 65
SPRAY ATSF 100 67 62
SPRAY Old BCR 108 75 70
SPRAY Roof Brown 93 75 73
SPRAY rb+cr 144 67 68
SPRAY ComArt Ultramarine 59 111 125
SPRAY MF Maroon Tuscan 120 85 89
SPRAY Medea Repro Magenta 209 62 78
SPRAY Medea Repro Cyan 3 94 165
SPRAY MF GN Sky Blue 68 129 176
SPRAY MF Signal Red 209 64 71
SPRAY MF Light Tuscan 138 77 82
SPRAY MF Dark Duscan 102 76 77
PHOTO WPMW 0245 145 102 107
PHOTO WP 4005 167 134 124

Dave Nelson

Ted Culotta notes:

By the way, I don't put too much stock in exact color
matches. 1,000 cars in a given series built by/for a
specific road probably had color variances right out
of the shops. Couple that with the fact that some
wintered in Minnesota while others got rained on in
Pittsburgh (no acid in the rain there in the 1940's,
huh?) while another spent the better part of the
winter in Florida... and all this is just for one
winter. The variance between two cars that came out
of the shops at the same time is staggering. Just
show some variety in your weathering and call it a
day.

To me, it's like trying to worry about the accuracy of a number. Let's see,
my calculations show the number to be 3.08976. What? You say the margin of
error is 2.0? Oh.

Mike Brock......I can't figure out how to get the photo of the interior of
the UP hopper on pg 105 of UP Steam in Color into my spectroscope.

I took the trouble to compile all the paint chip information that Ed Hawkins
had gathered on the various ACF cars, for each railroad. I would imagine
that the ACF records are a lot more documented than many a road's colors
are. (Until Chuck Yungkurth's book, D&H Steam in Color, came out, I wasn't
even sure what color, black or box car red, D&H cars were c. 1950, and
that's a road I've paid a lot of attention to. Nor do I feel I have a good
handle on what shade of box car red - other than a "cherry red" - for
Rutland box cars.)
Putting all the Hawkins information side by side for each road was an
eye opener. There were a lot of cases where the color shade was changed,
just 6 months apart. One gets the idea that perhaps such and such road
specified a particular brand of paint, due to a sale, etc. (Or changed due
to some perception, rightly or wrongly, that one brand held up better under
the weather, and didn't care about the exact shade.)
But then the question becomes - did the road continue to paint the cars
in the shade they were delivered in? (Including stocking various brands and
shades to match each class of cars when there was a change.) I don't think
so.
I have had club members who want to be told in no uncertain terms what
mix of paint to use for a given piece of equipment, as if color perception
was some sort of science. That's why artists and not engineers paint great
works of art.
Frankly, I would be much more concerned about matching a specific
weathering pattern, if I could, rather than the shade of a new car -
especially since an unweathered car looks so toy-like, since we don't have
steel box cars with subtle wavy steel panels.

- John

--- MDelvec952@... wrote:

I'm tending these
days to think of boxcar
red colors in their relationships to the other
boxcar reds. Some cars were
brown, some were burgundy brown, some were >

oxide......

I negelected to mention this and wouldn't have said it
as clearly as Mike just did. However, my thinking in
practice is just that same. When I go out to airbrush
models, I usually do about 6 at once. Unless I need a
specific color (such as a Santa Fe mineral red), I
will bring only two colors -- Scalecoat Oxide Red and
Scalecoat Box Car Red (actually closer to brown).
Anything I paint is either one of these straight up
(for example, PRR cars get straight oxide red) or a
mixture of the two that best represents (to my eyes)
the appropriate color. Weathering usually takes care
of the rest. By the way, any would-be smart alecks --
if I need black or Pullman Green, etc. these rules
don't apply!

Ted

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On Nov 16, 3:30pm, John Nehrich wrote:

Subject: Re: [STMFC] Freight Car Colors

Color is so subjective,

Oh, dear. I guess it's diatribe time again (hint: press delete).

Color is NOT subjective. It is not a matter of opinion; color is a
physical property of a physical object. Under a given set of conditions,
an object will reflect incident light at a particular combination of
frequencies. Those frequencies are measureable, quantifiable, and
reproduceable. In short, color is OBJECTIVE.

Does the color of light reflected by an object change when the observation
conditions change? Yes, indeed. The color of the incident light (noon vs
late afternoon), the transmission medium (hazy air vs clear air), angle of
incident light & angle of observed light all serve to change the reflected
color. But these do not make the color subjective.

Okay, I'm done now. It's time for me to take my Valium.

Regards,

-Jeff

--
Jeff Aley jaley@...
DPG Chipsets Product Engineering
Intel Corporation, Folsom, CA
(916) 356-3533

Shawn Beckert wrote:

The thread on freight car colors prompts me to offer this thought:

A really useful book would be one that consists of nothing but
color samples from the freight cars of every railroad that an example
could be found of....


Which brings to mind the following question - what color IS Pennsy
Freight Car Color anyway?


Ben Hom, running for dear life after dumping a 55-gallon drum of
gasoline on the fire...

Okay, it's my turn: it's a recent scientific observation
(I haven't read the original literature, just the press
releases, so I can't vouch for the absolute accuracy of
this) that there are really two different "types of human
color vision". Any person has one -- and this apparently
doesn't change with age and is (probably) genetic -- of the
two. The differences between them are the way that certain
non-primary colors are perceived. IIRC, there's some
region of the pink-orange spectrum that is seen as pink by
one set and as orange by the other. The experiments were
done by giving subjects color-cards and asked to arrange
them by (again IIRC) similarity.

The whole point of this is that even though the reflective
properties of a surface can be characterized "perfectly",
the human perception of it may vary even under constant
conditions. But ultimately it doesn't matter (at least to
me) whether color is absolute or subjective; what matters
to me is the perception of it in the environments to which
I'm likely to take my models.

Assuming that I paint every, say, PRR box car with the same
color and brand paint, then at least in this small corner
of the world they'll be perceived by me and by visitors as
similar, if not identical which, as has been pointed out,
may not be totally prototypical either, but that's another
matter. I personally believe that too much variation in
the "same" color will look bad regardless of what the PRR
did. (Also, IIRC, there's a big difference in color
perception of an object that's 4 square inches than one
that's several square yards).


Okay, now I'm going for the pills too.

Norm

John Nehrich wrote:

*snip*

. . . There were a lot of cases where the color shade was changed,

just 6 months apart. One gets the idea that perhaps such and such road
specified a particular brand of paint, due to a sale, etc. (Or changed

due

to some perception, rightly or wrongly, that one brand held up better

under

the weather, and didn't care about the exact shade.)

*'nother snip*

I have a file folder (acquired at some significant expense on eBay) which
documents the repainting of the Erie PA's into two-tone green in the 50's
(at least I'm in the right time period for this list, sorry about the
equipment referenced!). They were delivered in black and yellow, but after
the E8's came, they were repainted to be in the passenger scheme.

Anyway, the documentation was kept, I expect, because they were conducting a
test of different manufacturer's paints. No two locomotives were painted in
the same paint, or at least the same combination of paints. Now, I'm sure
(sort of) that they spec'd the same paint >colors<, but this has served to
convince me that the perceived differences between the way one PA looks in a
color photo vs another PA, is not only due to the differences in light
quality, but also due to differences in the paint itself.

I anticipate turning this information into an article for the ELHS "Diamond"
eventually, and getting into the info in greater depth than I have so far,
but one thing I have noticed is that there are paint manufacturers listed
that certainly are NOT around today.

SGL