Passenger Consists - is perfect colour match important ?

[eric220]

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.

Yeah, that really made me mad when I got the diner and obs.  This is a case where consistency matters.  The two different cars pop out and look flatly wrong.  That they were all made by one manufacturer makes this totally inexcusable.

I'm aiming for consistency within blue ribbon trains, like the Broadway.  I spent several hours and many attempts mixing paints to match the Kato "tuscan" for my superdome.  If you look at the car directly, you can tell it's not Kato quality, but when looking at the entire train, it just blends in.  For the lesser passenger trains, I'm going to experiment to see how bad the variation is.  My inclination is that it's not going to matter to me as much as the blue ribbon trains, but we'll see.

[u18b]

I have mixed feelings. 

A consist in models looks good to me if uniform.

But I know that CSX cars are not all uniform.

And if the color wasn't "just right" the first time, I'm not sure I want the manufacturer to keep making it just for the sake of consistency.

I'm friends with Paul Graf and known him about 25 years.  And when they started making Chessie locos on their own, away from Kato, the Vermillion (orange) was too red.  I'd say Paul- It's too red.  Next loco was too red again!  He finally got so sick of me talking to him he asked me to mix some paint and tell him what it SHOULD be (in my opinion, of course).  I did. Lol.  I have no idea if Paul ever used my formula, but I do know that starting somewhere around the China U25B so many years ago- the orange started looking good!

So I don't WANT the color that those original GP40s in Chessie to continue to be used.
And Atlas has done a great job changing.

[seusscaboose]

Yeah, that really made me mad when I got the diner and obs.  This is a case where consistency matters.  The two different cars pop out and look flatly wrong.  That they were all made by one manufacturer makes this totally inexcusable.

I'm aiming for consistency within blue ribbon trains, like the Broadway.  I spent several hours and many attempts mixing paints to match the Kato "tuscan" for my superdome.  If you look at the car directly, you can tell it's not Kato quality, but when looking at the entire train, it just blends in.  For the lesser passenger trains, I'm going to experiment to see how bad the variation is.  My inclination is that it's not going to matter to me as much as the blue ribbon trains, but we'll see.

Ouch
I didn't realize they were that bad

Are the prr rpo's that bad as well?

Ugh

[chicken45]

Ouch
I didn't realize they were that bad

Are the prr rpo's that bad as well?

Ugh

Yes. (Cues Alwyn...) I think it was close to a lighweight PRR RPO, but not close enough. I wonder why they didn't do a fleet of modernism scheme on the RPO. I would have considered it, then.
Maybe I'll just give up and model CSX passenger cars.

[nkalanaga]

I just looked at that video.  That isn't a "colour variation", that's an entirely different paint scheme!  At least CCS's Big Sky Blue is recognizably supposed to be GN's 1967 passenger scheme, in spite of the wrong blue.

[CBQ Fan]

The engine does not match the cars at all!!!  Almost looks green!!

[Alwyn Cutmore]

I have not given up on he RPO but I figure what will happen is that I will etch the sides and do the job properly. It is like the P85 cars. They are particularity wrong in that the sides are supposed to be a mirror image not the same side on both sides. I forget where I found that out but it really peeved me when I realised it. I think i was in an old MR. More brass etching. That way I can do the stainless steel inlay to go around the windows. As for same colour you need to remember that all over the world pass trains were made up of cars that had paint repairs, build dates and exposure to the elements that were all different. While in the world of modelling everything need to be pristine. I cannot wait until I get my weathering gun out to my BWL sets. Also remember that a lot of consists had through foreign cars in the mix.

[peteski]

Puddy,
for me, N scale model of a  passenger consist which in 1:1 scale was uniformly painted, should have uniform  color.  To me the visual uniformity and esthetics trump  the realism (where some cars could be faded or dirty).  The accurate color matching to the prototype does not bother me as much as the uniformity of the color in the consist.  IMO, there are too many variations to consider when trying to match paint to the real cars.  There are so many variations to consider (including the "scale effect"). I wish that manufacturers would get together and create a color library to which all of their offerings would be matched.  That way, no matter who manufactured a specific model, it would match color of a model manufactured by another company.

Then of course there is the instance when the older release of a manufacturer's model is incorrect and the next release has a corrected color.  That is a tough call!  To me if the previous release's color wasn't off by much, I would use that slightly mismatched color on the new release. But if the original color was way off, I would correct that in the next release.  Of course, a color library I mentioned earlier would have eliminated this problem. 

[eric220]

The engine does not match the cars at all!!!  Almost looks green!!

Dang right!  Tuscan locos don't exist on my PRR.

[Nato]

            The best P.R.R. Fleet Of Modernism scheme in my opinion is Con Cor on their mostly smooth side cars. Of course none of the cars match real Pennsylvania Prototypes and the use of a semi smooth side GN dome car in the 5 car sets is a No - No,  even Con Cor has known from their early days in the business that P.R.R. & New York Central had no domes, but they decided to offer them anyway ,but not in passenger sets until the 5 car sets were released. Nate Goodman (Nato).

[Ike the BN Freak]

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.

I'm with Brian on this one.  Close enough is good enough for me.  Sure I'd prefer the entire train to be the same, esp if its a Blue Ribbon Train, say a 1955 Empire Builder...but with companies like Kato doing entire Blue Ribbon Trains, the colors all match.

For me, I'd want my Business cars to all match, so probably just will paint them myself, however I'd like to get a new core car, as I'm not too happy with the Con-cor cars as cores.  Honestly I'd like to use Kato's as my cores, but I have no means of milling out the sides to drop in the Brass Car Sides sides.  If anyone has a mill and can do that, even for a decent fee, I'd be happy to do it that way.  I was just getting inconsistent results cutting the sides off Con-cors then sanding down the sides a little to the side matches the roofline.