Hi Ed; I suspect most real railroads were a bit more strict than your post applies. Most used standards and "drift cards" and required that suppliers match the color closely. PRR "Freight Car Color" in the steam era was an somewhat orange/red oxide color. A car from that era painted Tuscan just looks wrong, as would a PRR passenger car painted FCC. B&O used a similar color on it's cars, while New Haven and ATSF used a much more brown color. While the EXACT color isn't possible, you probably want to get in the ball park. Between print sources (books and magazines) and on-line images you should be able to get close for most cars with a bit of looking.
Once out of the shop, weathering effects would begin to change things a lot. A PRR car that ended up traveling the Southwestern U.S. a lot would look very different from one that remained mostly in the Northeast. Sun, soot and road dirt (and sometimes the cargo) really changed the base color a lot, until some red based cars almost look black! Then there is the whole issue of the difference in size and lighting of our models compared to the real thing... I don't want to re-open that discussion at this time! Pieter E. Roos Railroad Home Page at www.geocities.com/pieter_roos/pieter_1.html --- On Wed, 1/21/09, ed_loizeaux <[email protected]> wrote: From: ed_loizeaux <[email protected]> Subject: {S-Scale List} Re: What PRR Paint colors? To: [email protected] Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 2:13 PM > suppliers colors didn't match from one batch to another. > Roger Nulton And then there was the day Arden Goehring walked down a l-o-n-g siding with many many UP caboosi on it. He correctly noted that the color "UP Yellow" varied all over the map. After that experience, he never worried about using the exact correct color anymore. They were all correct in one way or another. Made life much easier. As Alfred E. Neumann said, "Who me, worry?" I guess those Pansy guys are not as smart as Brother Arden. Cheers...Ed L. ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[email protected] mailto:[email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
