Passenger Consists - is perfect colour match important ?

[wm3798]

I remember riding the Cleveland Night Express when I was a very small kid...  As the name would imply, I slept through most of it!
 

[skytop35]

Manufacturers should be consistent so that new releases match paint from previous releases.

(I've started repainting my COLA consist)
 

[chicken45]

Dante has a special ring for CCS for green-lighting this...ok maybe a BIT DRAMATIC, but I did just finish reading Dan Brown's Inferno.

[jmlaboda - RIP]

"I have seen literally tens of thousands of photo's of passenger cars over the years..."

So your the guy whose got my hit counter on the Passenger Car Photo Index nearing a half a mil... 

There are always factors to consider when modeling a so-called matched paint scheme on a given train, especially if there is head-end equipment as a part of the consist, largely because the last cars to receive new paint are head-end cars.  The more they sit, for whatever reason, the less revenue a car can make and when it came to express shipments it was a lot of money, especially so after WWII until the early-60s (go ahead... check history... you will see that when express was removed from many named trains the trains were downgraded, and then often discontinued).  Head-end cars, even a few years older, were often considerably more faded and dirty than passenger carrying cars, and if you had a road, Maine Central as an example, who decided soon after receiving new cars to discontinue passenger service the effects of age and weather were compounded considerably on all car types, not just head-end cars.

Something else to consider is the management of a given railroad.  More times than not it was locomotives, not passenger cars, that received the most attention as far as keeping equipment clean and shiny.  To use another example, the Atlantic Coast Line, whose "Royal Purple" paint, while beautiful when new, would fade and weather so severely that locomotives had to be painted every 3 to 4 years, while passenger cars did not see new paint quite as often... even to the point there were still passenger carrying cars in purple, silver and primrose paint into the SCL era though no locomotives lasted in that paint so very long.

Illinois Central was on the other end of the spectrum.  In addition to keeping their cars in top shape looks wise they had pool partners to do the same with the cars used on their crack streamliners with roads such as the Atlantic Coast Line, Central of Georgia and Florida East Coast all keeping passenger carrying cars looking their best.  And IC was careful to use head-end cars mostly on secondary trains and not its crack streamliners in an effort to keep their streamliners looking their best.  Add to it the fact that IC's paint was top notch the variance of the quality of a car's looks did not sway very much from one way to the other... a good example is a former Central of Georgia car still in IC paint for service on the IC's Seminole, some 40-years plus since it was last repainted...
http://rrpicturearchives.net/rspicture.aspx?id=173445

"Manufacturers should be consistent so that new releases match paint from previous releases."

I have to agree, but only to a degree... if it can be proven (and it has been numerous times on this forum alone) when a manufacturer got the paint wrong they need to strive to get it right because in the long run it will cost them, both in sales and in credibility.

As pretty as a perfectly matched consist might look it often was not as perfectly matched as we modelers want them to be beyond the first year of service but the difference with most cars would not be as extreme either, at least as far as passenger carrying cars were concerned.

[Loren Perry]

Okay, how about heavyweight passenger trains? I have some Pecos River Brass factory painted ATSF heavyweight cars that don't match any other factory painted cars in my fleets. And my Micro-Trains Pullmans don't quite match my Con-Cor/Rivarossi cars. And none of the premixed Pullman Green bottled paints from all the major paint manufacturers match each other! Any thoughts on this?

[nkalanaga]

In my case, no, although they should be reasonably close.  I model 1974, with Amtrak, so my BN cars range from 3 to 4 years old, and should match fairly well.  GN BSB is 4 to 7, a wider spread, and older paint.  GN EB is 7 to 25+, and NP's two-tone green is 4 to ? (when did they start using it?), so those can have a wider variation.  About the only thing that doesn't change much with age is stainless steel, which covers the CB&Q cars.

Having said that, the recent Centralia Shops BSB cars were simply unacceptable - far too dark for any GN paint I've ever seen.  Faded I can stand, but not too dark.  I won't be buying any more of them.  Their EB and BN cars were within my limits and I'm not complaining about them.

[wazzou]

Just out of curiosity, which, if any, of these companies got the NPRHA imprimatur?

[Not trying to be snide - I'm just curious, because NP's two-tone green is by far my favorite passenger scheme.]

I'll look into it to be sure Gary.  We have just started to do this in the last year but I'd be surprised if both of them haven't been provided color card sets.

[robert3985]

Yup, a manufacturer should attempt to get the roads' colors as close as possible.  Maybe that would be difficult to do in some cases, but not impossible. 

However, I gave up hoping that various manufacturer's would come close to actual U.P. Armour Yellow and/or Harbor Mist Gray...or, for that matter the model railroad paint manufacturers' either.

So, about 20 years ago, I took matters into my own hands and make a sample sheet of various manufacturer's U.P. colors in order to go match them to real, freshly painted engines sitting in Riverdale Yard (with permission).

I discovered that Scalecoat and Scalecoat II were the closest to both Armour Yellow and Harbor Mist Gray.  I then compared my little sample chip sheet to U.P. passenger cars behind the 3985 on a visit to Ogden, and again, Scalecoat was the clear winner.

However, when comparing my chip sheet to weathered, well-used motive power, Pollyscale Armour Yellow was the closest and none of the colors I used were acceptable for weathered Harbor Mist Gray.

So, although a lot of modelers say that passenger trains cars would fade at a different rate and that you should expect to see paint in various stages of fading in a passenger consist, when looking at photos or videos, I don't see that at all.  Sometimes I'll see cars with different paint schemes in the same train, especially during the year there was a change in the scheme, because all the cars didn't get painted at the same time, but I don't see major fading of certain cars in passenger consists.

So, that bothers me when I put together a passenger train from Kato that consists of cars and engines from ten years ago, and my Kato COLA is nowhere near the same color, or I add a couple of cars from Walthers or Centralia Car Shops and neither the gray or yellow match. 

But, even though it bugs me, it doesn't bug me enough to get out the stripper and the airbrush and fix the problem.

[sirenwerks]

Yes, it is important, especially when modeling a train like the NCL or Empire Builder.  RRs have standards for paint and, while weather will slightly alter paint pigments, if you look at a photo that presents a significant amount of a consist you'll see there's little noticeable variation.  Yes, exceptions to this rule exist, but for the most part there's consistency.  Of course, model fidelity and ride height and manufacturer quality control will likely not ensure matches exist between runs by a single manufacturer or models of different manufacturers.  I'm slowly working on an EB consist and have resigned to just repaint everything.  Unless Kato happens to smile upon me and release it and the NCL, there's really no other way to get the model quality I want.

[oakcreekco]

Western guy here, so most won't care, but, it's important to me.

DRGW is impossible to "match" between manufacturers, and even different runs from the same manufacturers vary, and not just a little.

Pics are hard to evaluate. Based on the timeframe, 50 through the 70's, passenger equipment photos are old, and the sun/light/shade make a huge difference on how the DRGW cars really looked.

It's frustrated me my entire life, but if that's my biggest problem, I've got it made.....in the shade. LOL

[Nato]

           This has been discussed (argued) at various times on this list. Last one was when the KATO City Of Los Angeles released and the yellow was different than on previous Kato UP releases. A zillion years ago Con Cor switched from a too orange UP color,that Kato used on locos and cars produced early days for Con Cor. They switched to a yellow color that was a light pale (Cannary Yellow) color. Everyone hated it. With in about a years time Con Cor announced that they were switching to Scale Coat Paints, not just for Onions Pathetic (UP) cars . Getting away from Uncle Pete cars and lokies, Con Cor's current NP Two Tone Green Color on smoothe side cars looks visually good to me who got to view NP cars in Seattle and Butte , Montana on a couple of trips. IM Centrailia also looks close. If I were modeling a newly delivered passenger consist I would want it to match on all cars, but out there in the real world weathering ocurs all the time. Even roads like Union Pacific, and IC who touched up their cas and the trucks at layovers (end point terminals) had some color differences in consists. Lastly I have seen UP cars in long term storage, on scrap lines, or at museums where the Gray, sun faided, bleached out and looked silver in color.             Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah

[jmlaboda - RIP]

Paint color variations... PRR 4600...

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/prr4600.jpg

[CBQ Fan]

I think one issue is the scale.  When you look at a real train you can only see a small portion of it up close, say standing on the platform.  Or when you look at it from say an overpass you again can only focus on one portion of the train in detail or the train as whole with less detail.  That compared to a model train on your layout your perspective is totally different.  I think that difference has a major impact on how we expect our models to look.

[nkalanaga]

Brian:  That would be a factor.  One simply can't SEE an entire (long) prototype passenger train at one glance.  Even if it's on straight track and you're looking down the length you can't focus on the entire train at once.  That may also be why slight variations don't bother me:  I model the Amtrak era.  If two cars look that bad next to each other I can separate them, but usually the difference isn't that much of a problem for me.

[mcjaco]

Modeling the Soo is nice, becasue it's all heavyweights even into the 60's, and they were cheap. Nothing matched, which I like.  Adds variation to the consist.