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Rapido Southern Pacific USRA SS boxcars
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radiodial868
Shoot me now. Another color controversy.
I was about to paint 3 more SP BX-13/-14 Sunshine kits, when my Rapido SS USRA cars showed up (left in photo). And what is this? poop brown? Following a long running discussion a couple years back on this group, I settled on using Tru-Color SP Freight paint based upon many convincing arguments and examples. Since I have a bunch of the upcoming B-50-15 & -16s on order too, I guess I'm going to have to explore rubbing red oxide Pan Pastel onto these. The difference is too great to be explained away as "newly painted", "sun-fading" or 'soot accumulation". The Rapido cars are a good reminder that I need to do a better job of sanding the bejeebers out of the cast kit resin running boards, though. -- ------------------- RJ Dial Mendocino, CA |
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Your left hand car is what it looks like after it rains, under medium dark clouds. And your right hand car is what it looks like on a sunny day in the southwest, around noon. You need to specify the WEATHER on your model railroad if you're going to get it all right. On 10/8/2022 1:48 PM, radiodial868 wrote: Shoot me now. Another color controversy. --
Tim O'Connor Sterling, Massachusetts |
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Scott
Color is always subject to so many variables. Below is an ebay link to a 1955 Slide that is pretty close to the rapido color.
Southern Pacific boxcar Scott McDonald |
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Bill J.
AND, Star brand makes a very nice SP BC Red! And a Sunburn Red.
bill jolitz |
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That's pretty close to what think most photos of SP box cars of that era look like, under average daylight conditions. The old Scalecoat I "box car red" looks quite close to that color. And it's close to the color IMWX and Red Caboose applied to their factory painted 1937 AAR SP box cars. Very fresh SP paint in the 1960's reminds me strongly of Accupaint's Conrail "alkyd brown". But strong colors like that (e.g. Wisconsin Central maroon is another) fade pretty fast. The SP box car in the attached photo was painted with SC I box car red. I didn't paint the caboose but it's certainly a reasonable color for SP as well. On 10/9/2022 12:23 AM, Scott wrote: Color is always subject to so many variables. Below is an ebay link to a 1955 Slide that is pretty close to the rapido color. --
Tim O'Connor Sterling, Massachusetts |
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radiodial868
Ha! It seems that paint color is a politics level type discussion based upon the offline responses I got. Thanks to everyone who did contact me, plus the online responses here. I really found the one on what minerals that were used to make BCR paint, the ochres, oxides, Vermillion, etc., and how they faded or darkened with time and sunlight to be interesting.
Short summary is:
To that end, I'm going to do maybe one or two Rapido's with very light weathering and lettered as if recently repainted, lighten up the others and then weather my existing Tru-Color cars a little heavier. All is good. -- ------------------- RJ Dial Mendocino, CA |
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Scott H. Haycock
There was an article somewhere in the past about a modeler (narrow gauge, IIRC) who's solution to this dilemma was to model everything as it appeared in photos- he modeled in B&W.
Scott Haycock
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Tony Thompson
R.J. Dial wrote:
Short summary is:Certainly true about suppliers, and SP employees have told me that car builders got a list of acceptable paint suppliers, and if the color was from one of those companies, and “in the ballpark” of the SP paint chip, it was okay. No perfectionism. At the same moment, despite many comments about changes over the years, the fact is that a 1942 SP chip and a 1956 chip are both an exact match to a 1995 SP paint chip for the Freight Car Red color. So at least the INTENTIONS remained the same. |
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Fred Swanson
During the period of USRA control of the railroads would the SP order paint from a paint manufacture or mix their own from pigments, oils, clays and other ingredients using their inhouse formulas?
Fred Swanson |
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Matt Smith
Soooooo, another variable many people forget is that we are all a bunch of "old guys". By that I mean 1 in 12 men are, or will be color blind/color deficient. WIth red and green being the colors most affected by color blindness. Maybe invite that special lady in your life for a second opinion when trying to match colors.
-- Matt Smith Bloomington, IL |
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Scott H. Haycock
I think being able to use RGB values in the pursuit of the colors we want can have an important role for anyone trying match a book picture or photo, and more.
Toward that end, I'm using online catalog images to compile a collection of virtual color chips of all my paints-see attachment. I just screen-grab these off of the internet. I do the same with any colors I want to pursue from other sources.
When I want to try and match a color, as long as I have something digital with that color in my computer, I can compare it to my paints in the this file. If I don't have a close match, I can look at the color charts from the manufacturer.
Any free photo editor, even the ones on your phone should have a color picker tool and an RGB readout. Compare each color chip to your target until you are satisfied, using the RGB values. Just make sure the White Balances' match (an exposure adjustment).
When you get as close as you can, the RGB values will point you in the right direction to adjust the color, like a color wheel.
While color matching seems to be more art than science, at least at our level, this method isn't exact. But for anyone with color problems, it should help.
This method will also help you find matches between brand names. Sheens are another issue.
My experiments in this direction are on hold until I get moved, but I'm confident that a lot of hand-wringing will be alleviated using this method.
Scott Haycock
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Dan Stainton
Amen to that.
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Scott, Folks,
RGB is a color system that measures transmitted light. It is used for devices such as monitors. In addition, it is device dependent and by definition not precisely repeatable from device to device. It was never intended to, nor is it suitable to use to describe
paint colors. I siuggest that you use an appropriate color system for pigments, such as Munsell (which is the gold standard, but hard to use unless you are a professional and have access), RAL or Pantone, or CMYK if you are using inks.
Regards,
Bruce Smith
Auburn, AL
From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io> on behalf of Scott H. Haycock <shhaycock@...>
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2022 8:29 PM To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io> Subject: [EXT] Re: [RealSTMFC] Rapido Southern Pacific USRA SS boxcars
I think being able to use RGB values in the pursuit of the colors we want can have an important role for anyone trying match a book picture or photo, and more.
Toward that end, I'm using online catalog images to compile a collection of virtual color chips of all my paints-see attachment. I just screen-grab these off of the internet. I do the same with any colors I want to pursue from other sources.
When I want to try and match a color, as long as I have something digital with that color in my computer, I can compare it to my paints in the this file. If I don't have a close match, I can look at the color charts from the manufacturer.
Any free photo editor, even the ones on your phone should have a color picker tool and an RGB readout. Compare each color chip to your target until you are satisfied, using the RGB values. Just make sure the White Balances' match (an exposure adjustment).
When you get as close as you can, the RGB values will point you in the right direction to adjust the color, like a color wheel.
While color matching seems to be more art than science, at least at our level, this method isn't exact. But for anyone with color problems, it should help.
This method will also help you find matches between brand names. Sheens are another issue.
My experiments in this direction are on hold until I get moved, but I'm confident that a lot of hand-wringing will be alleviated using this method.
Scott Haycock
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Scott H. Haycock
My idea was posted for those who may have vision problems; color blindness, etc., as a possible way to get closer to a color that they maybe having a hard time matching.
I never intended to imply any scientific breakthrough. Sometimes a screwdriver can be used as a hammer :)
Scott Haycock
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Not just color deficiency but light sensitivity itself -- We need much more light on the subject now to see it clearly. Inexpensive color scanners (3-in-1) can give you pretty accurate RGB values for any color. It's more work, but it is more accurate. On 10/10/2022 8:28 PM, Matt Smith wrote: Soooooo, another variable many people forget is that we are all a bunch of "old guys". By that I mean 1 in 12 men are, or will be color blind/color deficient. WIth red and green being the colors most affected by color blindness. Maybe invite that special lady in your life for a second opinion when trying to match colors. --
Tim O'Connor Sterling, Massachusetts |
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Bruce, that is true, and also irrelevant. Since we each have no fixed "standard" of color perception, the RGB values do indeed show DIFFERENCES in perceived color, and that's really all one person needs. It's all relative. Too much blue? Too much green? And so on. (But you're right for mixing paints, those things you listed are handy.) Also, everyone should calibrate their monitors if they can (color perception deficiency being a problem). That way at least we can be sure when we send a color image to the group, that it looks pretty much the same on everyone's screen. I've noticed that my new Galaxy S22 phone exaggerates many hues -- I don't know if I can dial it down, but I'd sure like to. Even the camera in the phone does it! Yuck. We live in a Kodachrome world, but electronics seem to want it to be a FujiFilm world (saturated colors). On 10/10/2022 10:03 PM, Bruce Smith wrote:
--
Tim O'Connor Sterling, Massachusetts |
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 sp_1573 C-40-4 other-side. TimOC collection.JPG)
