PRR Freight Car Color

[chicken45]

I'm excited for said book!

[prbharris]

I'm excited for said book!

Me too. The PRT&HS have a great track record of breaking my budget - especially when mailed over the pond. I have a number of this type of book for railways and I am looking forward to this one. I hope that it is not too heavy.

However, my observations of real life and historic pictures is that I am always very surprised to see the significant variation in paint schemes in one train, even with fairly new cars of the same road - and even in official publicity photos of brand new train consists.

This is very rarely replicated by modelers, but can be with different model manufacturers cars or differing runs. I have an unweathered PFE reefer consist with multiple slightly varied colored cars, and looks fine.

Peter

Peter Harris
N Scale Kits
www.nscalekits.com

[Lemosteam]

For SPFs, this is both art and science.  The PRRT&HS has a paint committee that has identified Munsell numbers for numerous paint colors for rolling stock, locomotives, and structures.  They provide this information free of charge to manufacturers.  They are in the process of creating a publication in print form.  Their research has been pretty deep - for example from the 1930s to 1960s there are several freight car eras, each with freight car color variations.  With that said, there are many variations and variables that affect the colors that we see, including light source, weathering, paint age, etc., etc.  Most important is to gain an understanding of what is good for your era and use your own eye to determine what is right for you.

Their Munsell values are already online as well but in terms of personal use for mixing paint, Munsell is useless.  They need to add an RGBY and or standard tint base and tint equivalents on there too.