SP&S wide-stripe passenger colors

[nkalanaga]

I'm trying to do some custom decals, and need to know what color the stripe was.  Every picture I find is a different color, many wildly different, and while I can find matches for most of them, I'd like to know the actual color. 

Was there an "actual color", or did they just mix a batch of "yellow-tan" when they wanted to paint a car?

To make the question more complicated, the most useful answer would be the CYMK color code, as that's what the decal printer actually needs.

While we're at it, what color was the dark green?  Again, pictures vary, with some looking like GN EB green, others similar to NP Dark Passenger Green, and yet others various shades of generic "Pullman Green".

[signalmaintainer]

Most SP&S enthusiasts agree that the green is closest to GN Empire Builder green, while the yellow is closest to what NP used on its four-axle road switchers and F-units.

If you wish, please e-mail your mailing address. I believe I still have one bottle each of the official SP&S yellow and green tinted from the original DuPont chip. These were offered by the SP&S Historical Society several years back.

[nkalanaga]

signalmaintainer:  Thank you for the information, and the offer, but I don't need the paint.  Keep it for your modeling, or for someone who does need it.

I model the BN in Montana, and the dining car Columbia was used in the early Empire Builder.  As simple as the paint scheme is, I'm planning on doing the stripe as a decal, both to eliminate masking and to ensure that the stripe and lettering match. 

So, now all I need to do is find the color code for NP Yellow...

[nkalanaga]

Found it, I think.  How close is Badger's Model Flex "Northern Pacific Yellow", #16-78?  Art-paints.com has a page for it, with CYMK, RGB, and html codes, so that's all I need, if the color is close. 

The online sample looks much too dark, but that could be my computer.  More important, it's much darker than color samples I've gotten from most online pictures.  But if the paint is close, I'll try it.

[signalmaintainer]

Give the Modelflex a whirl. I tried it years ago when I painted some Alcos in N and HO scale. Sorta close, but not a yellow as I found out later.

I was thinking of the paint offer as being something you could make a color chip from for color matching.

[nkalanaga]

OK, I'll print a sample and see what I get.  An inkjet printer is probably more accurate than my monitor at color rendition.

I found a paint a few days ago, on the same Art-paints.com site, that matched several online pictures, and, of course, was nowhere close to others.  It was Testors "USSR Light Earth Brown", from their military paints.  Also "not a yellow", to my eye, but light than the Modelflex "NP Yellow".  I was going to use it, and might still, depending on how the print test looks.

[nkalanaga]

The test print is done, and I decided to split the difference between the USSR and NP colors.  Not as hard as it sounds, just average the various values, and it looks close enough for me.

However, in digging online, I found some RGB-CYMK conversion sites.  When I entered the RGB values for the colors I'm using on my order, the CYMK values were nowhere near those on the Art-paints site, which are what I started with.  The color samples the converters returned looked the same to my eye.  When I entered the Art-paints sourced CYMK, the RGB values were very close, but not identical, to what I started with, and again, the colors looked the same to me.

It seems that there are at least two ways to make almost any color in CYMK.  Art-paints uses CYM, and avoids K (black) as much as possible, while the converters use any two of the CYM colors and K, but never all three CYM.

I'll send both sets of codes with my order, and let the printer decide which to use.