Weekend Update 4/12/26

[Maletrain]

B&O Royal Blue is another color that looks too dark on models. 

Manufacturers have produced models that run from the true color all the way to almost pastel sky blue. 

Unless you want to paint a whole passenger train, it is best to just try to match the colors on the RTR models in that train when adding a car. 

In my era (early-to-mid-1950s) the B&O had few trains that were made up of fully matching paint schemes, anyway.  And the amount of real weathering was very uneven among cars on the same trains, much of the time, too. In my era, only the Columbian train remained with a matched, smooth-sided light weight car set.  The Capitol Limited and National Limited ran with a hodgepodge of smooth-sided light weights, corrugated stainless light weights, light weights with corrugation only below the windows, "streamlined" heavyweights with smooth sides and "turtle" roofs on 6-wheel trucks, sometimes even heavyweights with clerestory roofs with AC ducting.  That takes some of the pain out of color matching models.

And outdoor lighting makes everything look different, especially compared to fluorescent indoor lighting (speaking of "green").  Incandescent isn't much better.  And LEDs can be weird, too.  I have several LEDs that are supposed to match a 5,500K temperature spectrum that are NOT the same.

I have some converted 4-bulb fluorescent fixtures, each with a set of LED bulbs that is comprised of one 6,500K, one 5,500K, one 4,500K and one 3,900K LED, and that looks very much like a sunlit day.  But, when I tried to replicate that elsewhere, those bulbs were no longer available, and the ones that I used  were one 4,000K, two 5.500K and one 6,500K - which does not look so much like sunlight.

[nkalanaga]

The Sun itself is about 5700K, but the blue sky on a sunny day is closer to 7000K, and I suspect that if you could measure just the Sun in a clear sky it would be less than 5700.

[Maletrain]

The trouble with these "temperature" values is that they are theoretically related to the spectrum of light that is emitted by a "black body" at that temperature.  But, the sky is not a "black body" emitting light.  It is preferentially scattering the blue end of the spectrum that is being emitted by the Sun.  So, shadows look bluish, for instance.  Mimicking that with artificial light would be very difficult, especially since the net effect depends on the time of day and the weather.  On top of that, our brains have a built-in process for normalizing our perception of what is "white" to compensate for the variability in lighting conditions that we experience every day.

LEDs don't actually emit a black body spectrum, either.  My best lighting seems to come from a mixture of LEDs that are set to different "temperatures". 

But, we don't all see the same colors in the same way, even for the same object under the same lighting conditions.  SO, YRMV.

[nkalanaga]

Maletrain:  That's exactly the problem with color temperatures, and why most people think the Sun is yellow.  The blue light has been scattered across the sky, leaving the yellow and red coming straight through.

The last time I had to change fluorescent lights, I bought "true daylight" 5700K versions.  The result was hideous.  Even colors that look fine in real daylight, noon at about 38 degrees North, were far too blue.  I went back to what I'd been using for almost 30 years.  I have two-bulb fixtures, and each has one warm white and one cool white bulb.

[robert3985]

@nkalanaga @Maletrain - I'm pretty sure that the subject of a "proper" color temperature for our layouts and workshops can easily be over-thought.  Since the human eye/human brain interprets color...doesn't actually quantify it, we all see colors a bit differently from each other, and individual efforts at fitting what we're attempting to accomplish on our layouts and with our paint jobs is different from individual to individual.

One of the main things that my layout is intended to be, which I would consider to be minimally operations-oriented...mainly a rail-fanning model railroad, is to be a photo set, or sets...engineered to offer a lot of photo-taking opportunities since model railroad photography is one of my main interests.

After struggling with layout lighting during the incandescent to florescent to LED transition era, always having to fiddle either with my camera or post session in Photoshop to get my color where I thought it looked halfway decent, I decided to standardize my lighting in my trainroom, workshop and paintshop to 5000K LED lighting, so that my models' coloring looked the same while I was working on them, to when I was painting them, to when I was running them.

This has worked out well for me, and is especially noticeable when I take portions of my layout to trains shows that happen to be set up in big rooms that have big windows, such as in Evanston at the Roundhouse Festival where I have usually been allotted a space in the old machine shop with floor-to-ceiling windows.  Other portable layouts and modular setups that don't have standardized lighting or have lighting that's "warmer" than 5000K, contrast sharply against the natural sunlight that the big windows are letting into the old machine shop space.  My lighting, on the other hand, looks very similar to actual daylight coming through the windows...which I like.

When I did this to all of my lighting at home, at first, I thought it looked horrible...way too blue...but, my eyes and senses got used to it, enough that I eventually replaced one of my main workbench worklights, my 300W halogen light, with another 300W 5000K worklight because I hated the color of the halogen light and its contrast to every other light in my basement.

Although I mix lights of different color temperatures sometimes when taking photos, personally, I haven't found it necessary to do it on my layout from a cosmetic aspect when operating or working on my layout...actually just the opposite is what I like.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[bbunge]

B&O Royal Blue is another color that looks too dark on models. 

Manufacturers have produced models that run from the true color all the way to almost pastel sky blue. 

Unless you want to paint a whole passenger train, it is best to just try to match the colors on the RTR models in that train when adding a car. 

That was my experience.  Three different manufacturers and three very different colors.  My "target" are the original 1890 era trains.  Not only are there no real examples of the color, they didn't keep the trains blue very long because of uneven fading, so they went to a Pullman green.  Indeed, the "Royal Blue" car at the museum is green; although it isn't a Royal Blue car, but a similar car that was dressed up as one in 1927.  I ended up "liking" Tamiya X4 blue with a bit of black in it the best.

Bob

[nkalanaga]

Bob:  In my case the "proper" daylight lights really didn't work.  A lot of my plaster rocks are a gray-green color, common in western Montana.  Under the new lights, they rivaled my BN locomotives in color!

[NtheBasement]

You can't color match using digital photos.  Even film photos are going to be off.

Color rendition involves not just paint color but lighting, camera sensitivity and settings and the screen that you view photos on.  For example view the same photo file on your laptop and phone side-by-side, the colors are quite different.  So even if the paint matches perfectly, something on your layout is going to look different from something in a photo.

The "easy" way to paint match is to paint something, let it dry, then hold it up against the real thing in the same light.  Once you get it to match you can put your color chip on your layout, orient it parallel to your model's surface and eyeball any difference.

But weathering makes it all moot anyway.

[bbunge]

I spent about 10 years printing color photos, first in the Navy and later at a photolab while working through college.  The color enlargers had three color wheels (magenta/blue/cyan).  Color density was measured in "cc's".

There was a device that you would place somewhere on the projected negative image that you thought was somewhat grey, then turn the color wheels until the three numbers matched.

You would make a print, view it in a special booth that had calibrated lights, using graduated filters and might adjustments accordingly.  There were other ways it worked, but that was the basics.  Printing photos of US Navy ships was easy(ier) because you could find somewhere on the sunlight hull to get a neutral grey. 

In the mid 1980's I put many prints I made on the ship in boxes and have rarely opened them over the years.  When I do take them out, it is very, very clear the colors have shifted on some but not all and some have shifted one color and others shifted in other color directions.  There are many reasons this happens, but it does, so you can't really trust old photos either!

[C855B]

...you can't really trust old photos either!

Amen to that! Kodachrome 25 was notorious for exaggerating reds. I grew up in the SoCal desert, and photos of desert-sun-lit Santa Fe passenger trains were a constant topic in the community for the jump-off-the-image-and-eat-you emphasis of the War Bonnet scheme. We also became aware (many the hard way) that Ektachrome was not archival, with many experiencing green shift and sometimes extreme fading in under 10 years.

[DeltaBravo]

I was in the printing business for 25 years and we used 5K kelvin lights when looking to evaluate color between the original and printed piece. It was very white light, the purpose was to keep the light as neutral as possible as to not influence the final product. 

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I just came across this on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/397843369461

I think I'm on the right path.

[garethashenden]

I just came across this on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/397843369461

I think I'm on the right path.

So what's the deal with the nice clean PRR keystones and the painted over Penn Central logos? Is it some employee expressing their opinion or were they somehow miraculously preserved?

[nkalanaga]

It's a Conrail locomotive, so the Penn Central lettering could have been painted out, or it could have simply worn off.  PC wasn't noted for it's great paint and lettering.

The keystones are decals, probably added by an employee, which wouldn't be hard to do.