What makes anyone think that freight car paint didn't vary in color
from batch to batch from a specific manufacturer? I am thinking of 2
colors, freight car red (iron oxide red) and black.

Didn't the paint manufacturers shop around and buy raw materials
from different suppliers at the best price, just like the railroads
put out competitive bids?

My employer sells a coating based on a resin made from linseed oil.
The color on this stuff and color of the resulting dry coating vary
considerably from batch to batch in shades of amber.

We always thought that the color variation was due to growing
location and conditions (hot, dry growing season versus cold, wet
growing season for example) and plant strain (maybe there is more
than one strain of flax).

Ed Mines

ed_mines@... writes:

What makes anyone think that freight car paint didn't vary in color from
batch to batch from a specific manufacturer? I am thinking of 2 colors, freight
car red (iron oxide red) and black.

Ed,

I don't believe "anyone" thinks that the basic freight car colors or any
color for that matter didn't vary from use to use or shop to shop, ect. Even the
same can likely did form use to use.

Freight cars colors are as you perceive them to be... If you think they look
right, we might not agree, but likely we won't disagree ... publicly... Who
does your hobby serve?

Greg Martin

At 03:55 PM 5/15/2004 +0000, you wrote:

What makes anyone think that freight car paint didn't vary in color
from batch to batch from a specific manufacturer? I am thinking of 2
colors, freight car red (iron oxide red) and black.

Didn't the paint manufacturers shop around and buy raw materials
from different suppliers at the best price, just like the railroads
put out competitive bids?

My employer sells a coating based on a resin made from linseed oil.
The color on this stuff and color of the resulting dry coating vary
considerably from batch to batch in shades of amber.

We always thought that the color variation was due to growing
location and conditions (hot, dry growing season versus cold, wet
growing season for example) and plant strain (maybe there is more
than one strain of flax).

Ed Mines

I worked in a GM plant in the early '60s. They had great difficulty in keeping the colours within acceptable matching limits within the same plant, for parts that were sprayed at different locations and this was a very important aspect of their operation. And, they were certainly using the most advanced technology available at the time.

Al Welch

Greg Martin, echoing many, said:

I don't believe "anyone" thinks that the basic freight car colors or any
color for that matter didn't vary from use to use or shop to shop, ect. Even the
same can likely did form use to use.
Freight cars colors are as you perceive them to be... If you think they look
right, we might not agree, but likely we won't disagree ... publicly... Who
does your hobby serve?

I don't really argue with this or with others who have chimed in, but let's not lose sight of the fact that box cars of UP and Santa Fe, to choose one example, were of quite visibly different colors. There are, of course other examples. Sure, the EXACT shade may be elusive, but as with box car height differences, those differences in color are part of realistically reproducing the national car fleet. And they ain't entirely arbitrary.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Lest we forget, the human eyeball does not work the same for everyone. There are a lest 8 different "vision systems" for humans (this is from an image scientest at NASA's Jet Propulision Laboratory).

These 8 different systems vary only slightly, but the do appear to give "differnt colors" to different people!

Think about it... do you see color the same way your wife does?

Peter

--
--
Peter J. McClosky
Los Angeles, CA
http://home.earthlink.net/~pmcclosky
pmcclosky@...

Peter J. McClosky wrote:

Lest we forget, the human eyeball does not work the same for

everyone.

There are a lest 8 different "vision systems" for humans (this is

from

an image scientest at NASA's Jet Propulision Laboratory).

These 8 different systems vary only slightly, but the do appear to

give

"differnt colors" to different people!

Think about it... do you see color the same way your wife does?

My two eyes see colors differently. My left eye sees things very
slightly redder than my right eye, or from the other point of view
(so to speak), my right eye sees things very slightly greener. An
interesting, self-administered test anyone can do.

Tom Madden

Tom Madden writes:
My two eyes see colors differently. My left eye sees things very

slightly redder than my right eye, or from the other point of view
(so to speak), my right eye sees things very slightly greener. An
interesting, self-administered test anyone can do.

Uh, oh. I never even thought of that. Now probably in contests the entries will say something like, "color matched to prototype drift card with right eye" . . .


Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Tom Madden writes:
My two eyes see colors differently. My left eye sees things very slightly redder than my right eye, or from the other point of view (so to speak), my right eye sees things very slightly greener. An interesting, self-administered test anyone can do.<<

Then Tony Thompson writes...

Uh, oh. I never even thought of that. Now probably in contests the
entries will say something like, "color matched to prototype drift card
with right eye" . . .

Tony Thompson

Tom and Tony,

Do you see a distinct advantage to Toms ability if he were to judge a PRR modeling contest? Say the right eye for the DGLE and the Left for the Tuscan colors? INTERESTING!

Greg Martin

Greg Martin:

Do you see a distinct advantage to Toms ability if he were to

judge a PRR modeling contest? Say the right eye for the DGLE and the
Left for the Tuscan colors? INTERESTING!

Don't read too much into what I posted. The perception difference is
very slight, and I probably wouldn't have noticed it except that one
of my alleged "gifts" is the ability to match colors - or, more
precisely, the ability to tell what (and how much) needs to be added
or removed to tweak a color mix. My principal rapid prototyping
client pays handsomely for this ability (I have rescued many a batch
of expensive urethane resin), so I felt it was important to have a
pretty good handle on the capabilities of my particular "tools".

Try it yourself. A well-lit outdoor scene with a wide range of
colors, particularly reds, greens and blues. Cover one eye, then the
other, and see if you notice any difference in the way particular
colors look. Richard might have a problem on a gloomy day in
Ashland, where everything is green, gray and misty blue, and someone
in the slickrock country of Utah might be overwhelmed by all the
red, but the test (turning yourself into a blink comparator) is
pretty effective.

On the main topic of paint color and perception, which to my dismay
has now infested the Passenger Car List, I've always been more
concerned with relative values than absolute ones. If I line up five
boxcars, say from the Southern, Santa Fe, SP, UP and PRR, the colors
should progress from brown, to rich red-brown, to (what I think of
as) box car red, to oxide red, to orange oxide red. My versions of
each of those colors may be different from yours, but if either of
us has a problem with that, we may be taking our hobby a bit too
seriously.

Tom Madden