Probably old news but need some ATSF freight car red.   Any help here about brand and/or mix that might get me close.  Need to do touch up work on Walthers wood cabooses.  Just not sure what is available and don't want to open my last bottle of Floquil ATSF mineral brown.  It's a "REV 1" and I'm sure once open it will go bad!

    Seems Model Masters (1785 rust) would do.  Do they still sell Model Masters?

-- 
Jon Miller
For me time stopped in 1941
Digitrax  Chief/Zephyr systems, JMRI User
NMRA Life member #2623
Member SFRH&MS

Tru-color makes two versions of this--one for pre-1945 cars and one for post-1945.   I have used their paint and it is great--it sprays perfectly right out of the bottle and dries glossy for decaling.

Or, you can just try to match actual prototype paint chips.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/timboconnor/17098035956/

Putting a label on a bottle does not make it accurate. Tru-Color
is known to sell the same color with more than one label.

Tim O'Connor


 >> Tru-color makes two versions... one for pre-1945 cars and one for post-1945.

TC claims their colors are based on actual RR swatches.The same ones Tim showed in his link. If these are not 'accurate', what must we rely on then? 60 year old color photos? The zillion reds offered by just as many modelmakers? I'm researching steam era WP BCR for instance. WP red offered by TC is way too purple in my humble opinion and might be taken from a later swatch, maybe even 1960's. The WP reds suggested by the many craftsman kit manuals I own all differ from eachother. There are recepies mixing Floquil (used that 40 years ago) in 1/4 and 1/2 amounts and I end up with pink. My point is: as long as you cannot measure from an actual paint swatch that's been out of the sun since 1945, the right color is always a wild guess. However, like the SP yard photo showed us a while back, there's always a base color used by RR's which weathers during the time. It's that specific steam era WP red I'm searching for. Untill that day I won't paint my precious and expensive craftsman kits (and my kitbashed ones) just because of the risk of ending up with a row of 'worthless' cars because the color is not right... Cheers from Holland, Fred 'WP' Jansz.

Scott, RR paint swatches are not photographed by paint manufacturers but scanned with calibrated industrial spectrophotometer. The automobile industry does it like this since ages. In fact many RR colors are simply based on automobile swatches. So when the WP museum in Portola finally finds that hidden but oh so wanted WP red paint swatch it has to be scanned, not photographed. In fact I understand there are nowadays APP's available for you phone so you can scan a color and translate it to for instance an automobile, RAL or Pantone color.
Cheers Fred

Fred,

WP paint colors definitely changed over time. If you have Jim Eager's WESTERN PACIFIC COLOR GUIDE, you can get a pretty good idea, but you still have to account for weathering differently, different paint lots, repaints, plus the film and lighting conditions of the original photo. I think Jim's book is the best guide we have.

WP/SN wooden cars often show up as a very intense FCR, almost PRR red. You can see this on pages 19 and 20, but the two views of the single-sheathed boxcars still look different. The two SN cars on the next page are fairly consistent, but a bit duller. But compare these with the wooden cabooses on pages 120-123, and you get a whole pallet of different reds.

The various steel cars show quite a bit of variety. I think the original paint on most of the pre-1950s cars was a fairly rich FCR, but it weathered and rusted differently from car to car, and you have to take into account that some of these cars are repaints. OTOH, the view of WPMW 0232 on page 25 is badly color shifted by the photographic process. The red is way too saturated (besides, it is a 1959 repaint, nearly out of our era). The correct color is probably closer to WP 23001 on page 26, but note that the color is different from SN 24XX coupled to it.

The photo of new WP 19622 in the late 1954 scheme on page 34 is quite interesting. It appears in the photo as a much lighter orange-red. Again, this could be a color shift, but I don't see this in the foreground. Also note the yellow journal box covers, no doubt for roller bearing trucks.

My advice is go ahead and paint your cars using Jim's examples where you can, and then weather the heck of out of them. They're going to turn out differently, just like the real cars did.

If anybody criticizes you, I can send some of "my boys" over to lean on them a bit. "Hey, I hear yous got a beef wit' my pal Fred and his paint jobs. You like dat kneecap? Wanna keep it? We be seeing yous buddy."

Yours Aye,


Garth Groff

shows Model Masters Rust to be the substitute for SantaFe Mineral Red. The Model Masters site shows it as availble.

    But where to find MM paint.  I called The Train Shop in SJ and they have Tru-Color.  So a trip to SJ next week.  It's only a 20 minute drive but then in old age I get lazy.  I only want a small jar of touch-up to sorta match the Walthers ATSF wood cabooses.  All those little pieces of wire one has to add.

    Discussions about paint always turn into I'm up to my a** in alligators when all I wanted to do was drain the swamp.  [very big grin]

-- 
Jon Miller
For me time stopped in 1941
Digitrax  Chief/Zephyr systems, JMRI User
NMRA Life member #2623
Member SFRH&MS

Not mentioned is the way each individual sees colors from the changes in your eyes as you age. I recently had cataract surgery in both eyes and it has completely changed my color perception.

Lee Thwaits

Fred makes some good points about trying to find "accurate" colors, but he falls

> into the fallacy of assuming this is an achievable goal. He mentions the swatches
> that Tim posted. How were these photographed?


Not photographed -- digital scans. Yes, the file is compressed (JPEG) while
I still have the original (TIFF). But I'm not going that rathole -- Just said
what I said to point out that most commercial paint products are at best just
approximations.

Tim

I am not an avid Santa Fe modeler but I do more than just dabble in it. I think I have a very good eye for color. I have used Tru-Color Paints on my most recent Santa Fe freight car and #19 you have pointed out here is a very poor representation of that color. Now saying that is nothing more than conjecture and I should have some basis for my statement and the correction to the TCP color, which as to mix it 50/50 with B&M Maroon.

 

TCP is not a good option in my most humble opinion to anything but current BNSF Brown. 

 

I based the decision on color photos, and compared the color to other works, like the color use on Red Caboose/IMWX ARR 1937 10'0" IH boxcar which I always considered a good match, and the work of Richard Hendrickson. I am fortunate enough to have some of his paints from his estate. Although the mix is not a great match it is a good base color and I can weather from there. ATSF Mineral Brown at least to me shows some crimson in the color.  

 

Don't hold back, open that bottle of ATSF Mineral Brown from Floquil, don't put your thinned mixture back in the bottle, tighten the lid, and store it upside down to preserve it.

 

Greg Martin  

 

Eventually all things merge into one and a river runs through it.
Norman Maclean

 

In a message dated 3/19/2016 11:55:28 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, STMFC@... writes:

    A few of us in New England have been using the Pantone Matching System for several

Don't hold back, open that bottle of ATSF Mineral Brown from Floquil,

    Normally I would do that but this bottle is the famous "REV  1".  Put normal disaul in it and it turned to jello.  I think it could be thinned with MEK (grin).

-- 
Jon Miller
For me time stopped in 1941
Digitrax  Chief/Zephyr systems, JMRI User
NMRA Life member #2623
Member SFRH&MS