I'd like to clarify or muddy the B&O gray on covered hoppers.

I have a B&O gray paint chip from the Mt. Clare drift card, and another intrepid B&O society member harvested a paint chip from a prototype N-43 PS-2 covered hopper from a spot where the sun don't shine.   They matched, but we were alarmed that this authentic B&O gray was so dark.   Unacceptable on a B&O model in a dim basement.

When the B&OHS sponsored a Kadee B&O PS-2 covered hopper project (600 cars, long sold out, no web images found today), I made a conscious decision to specify one grade of gray lighter.   Everybody loved it.  Even more arbitrary, Kadee only produces their gray covered hoppers in three shades: light, medium and dark, no matter what anybody's prototype gray paint chip says.   Spring Mills Valley produced their B&O N-34 wagontop covered hopper with its Kadee B&O PS-2 model predecessor in mind.   Both products are effective and popular.  Not the B&O gray.

I can hop and stomp around about accurate railroad colors with the best of them.  Yet there are times when an color offset is called for, in light of basement illumination, pun intended. We seek a believable illusion, sometimes prototype colors fall short.   Black, white, and gray are particularly vulnerable to ambient light and scale effects.


Jim Mischke
a B&O freight car go-to guy

On Nov 7, 2019, at 12:58 PM, Jim Mischke <jmischke@...> wrote:



I'd like to clarify or muddy the B&O gray on covered hoppers.

I have a B&O gray paint chip from the Mt. Clare drift card, and another intrepid B&O society member harvested a paint chip from a prototype N-43 PS-2 covered hopper from a spot where the sun don't shine.   They matched, but we were alarmed that this authentic B&O gray was so dark.   Unacceptable on a B&O model in a dim basement.

When the B&OHS sponsored a Kadee B&O PS-2 covered hopper project (600 cars, long sold out, no web images found today), I made a conscious decision to specify one grade of gray lighter.   Everybody loved it.  Even more arbitrary, Kadee only produces their gray covered hoppers in three shades: light, medium and dark, no matter what anybody's prototype gray paint chip says.   Spring Mills Valley produced their B&O N-34 wagontop covered hopper with its Kadee B&O PS-2 model predecessor in mind.   Both products are effective and popular.   Not the B&O gray.

I can hop and stomp around about accurate railroad colors with the best of them.  Yet there are times when an color offset is called for, in light of basement illumination, pun intended.  We seek a believable illusion, sometimes prototype colors fall short.   Black, white, and gray are particularly vulnerable to ambient light and scale effects.


Jim Mischke
a B&O freight car go-to guy

I have used a gray called SP Lettering Gray, available from more thane one model paint supplier. This is a mid-tone gray that looks good under a weathering coat of cement color.

Jim Kubanick

Morgantown WV

Group,

Thank you to everybody for the replies.  I was not aware of the RMJ article.  Thanks also to Ed Hawkins for the scans of the actual color chips and others for their insight into the problems of the shades of gray and the difficulty into scaling them to models.

There are plenty of model paint grays and I appreciate the responses of actual uses to help narrow down the field.  Please keep them coming.

Eric Mumper

From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io> On Behalf Of Richard Townsend via Groups.Io
Sent: Monday, September 16, 2019 5:44 PM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] covered hopper grays take 2

On Sep 16, 2019, at 9:03 AM, Eric Mumper <eric.mumper@...> wrote:

Group,

The last email about this subject did not provide a lot of responses which I kind of figured on as it is really obscure.

Let me try this another way:  If you have painted a covered hopper gray from the steam era, please respond with what paint you used and the model it was used on.  Any other information included with the response would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Eric Mumper
eric.mumper@...