Railroad structure colors: Question...
Martin Rosenfeld
regard to painting schemes. I believe most RRs used the same theme (ie,
buff with brown trim) for all stations. Did they use this same scheme
for all structures, tool sheds, interlocking towers, MoW bldgs, etc.?
Vern Smallman
They were using leaded paint, so they used whatever was on hand.
Whatever the Purchasing Department bought was what they used.
And the Purchasing Department regularly consulted the railroad
president's wife on such matters. As usual, we have a woman to blame
for the whole mess.
Vern Smallman
Martin Rosenfeld
John W Nehrich
and dark green trim. We are following both the D&H and Rutland in this
regard, and the light green is so faint, we start with a light gray and
add some drops of yellow to it. (Some of the structures on the layout are
a darker combination, as when we first started, we just used Floquil depot
olive and coach green.) Yes, in most cases, the same combination was used
on all the buildings, although sometimes when they changed their mind, not
all structures got instantly repainted, so you could see more than one
scheme.
Frankly, I've been puzzled over this tendency, as in the end of
the steam era or early diesel period, they sometimes used red with white
trim, or all white, etc. I think this all comes down to the evolution of
paint technology.
Contemporary Victorian architects complained about the
universality of the Greek Revival scheme of all white (so the frame
structure looked like it was made out of marble), with dark green
shutters. Then these architects went on describe their ideas of colors,
and they seemed to favor a two tone scheme, or even a three tone scheme,
with say a bright red ("Indian Red") for the window sashes.
There is a Sherwin-Williams book which has color plates from the
1820's to the 1920's, which show a gradual darkening of colors,
culminating in very deep colors around the 1880's. I think that at first
the available pigments for paints were very limited, and then tended to
use pastel colors at first. The idea of a two-tone scheme meant that the
most of the pigment could be saved for the trim color, and this helped
bring out the faint color of the main paint. Thus a darker green trim
made with very subtle light green look greener. A dark brown made the
brown in this "light coffee" color look browner.
Thus the railroads werein sync. with the prevailing ideas of style.
(Their depots, etc. were spill-overs of contemporary styles, and not some
"railroad architecture" unique to themselves, although a single-story
depot was unusual in a world of two or three story buildings.)
By the way, there was a color actually called "drab", a light
beige, which was considered by the Victorians as a desirable shade.
With the coming of the coal age, chemists discovered the dyes
available in coal, which could be recovered from the by-products coking
ovens (used to make coke for iron making, and for gas lighting). Later,
the switch to petroleum changed the source of these chemicals.
After WWI, DuPont was stuck with left over chemicals needed for
explosives, and devised the Duco paints, which revolutionized the paint
industry. (Ford's "Any color you want as long as it was black" for the
Model T was due to darker paint absorbing heat a little faster and thus
drying faster. It took a week or more of extremely tedious and
pains-staking work to paint an auto back then. Workers in lint-free
coveralls and gloves roasted under the heat lamps, picking off pieces of
dust, etc. that settled on the slow drying paint.)
The Victorian world was mainly colored by the natural occuring
pigments, the browns, reds, olive greens, and yellows. Blue in particular
weathered poorly, and you don't see much use of that shade until the
'50's.
- John Nehrich
http://www.union.rpi.edu/railroad
Frau Hildenbutz
>What does using leaded paint have to do with choice of color?
Plumbium (lead) is pretty heavy. The lead in paint tended to darken
light colors after application. Thus you only had about 6 basic
colors of leaded paint. Dupont was the first to mix paints in bright
colors by substituting chromate pigments for the lead.
Frau Hildenbutz
Martin Rosenfeld
through!
David J. Starr
scheme to paint our 1:1 scale Victorian house. The Victorians used to
paint the body of the house a light color and the trim (window sash,
sills, & stuff) a darker color. Some time between the 1890's and the
1950's the style changed. By 1950, houses (new construction anyhow)
were painted a light pastel color with white trim, reversing the
Victorian scheme. The Victorians were light body dark trim on houses,
now a days we do light body, white trim.
The Victorians used quite intense paint colors, at least to a modern
eye. The Sherwin Williams book shows houses done in very bright colors,
much brighter than anyone would use today.
David Starr
John W Nehrich
color it or did color it. For instance, there are a lot of bright red
autos shown in color ads in the 1940's, but I've been told by old timers
that bright red raised the purchase price and that after about 6 months
the red really faded and looked terrible.
In the case of the houses, they may have painted them brighter
than we would, but they might be expected the colors to quickly fade. (I
don't know one way or the other, but there has been a lot written about
the development of the paint industry.)
I believe the use of white reflects the return to classical
styles. The Victorians seemed to hate colonial styles as too primitive
and stark, but in the 1890's there was enough distance to the 1700's that
what had been old-fashion became fashionably old. White as a trim comes
in more in the 1920's and later. And the '30's and '40's seemed to favor
color schemes where the one shade contrasted with the other, while the
Victorians favored one shade as a continuation of another. At least
that's what I seem to gather, as the actual information is pretty scanty.
- John Nehrich
David J. Starr
believer in the strong intense color with trim darker than the house
body scheme. They point to the Sherwin Williams book as source. A fair
number of home owners have gone for it (including us) , and we have a
growing number of very colorful Victorians in town. They look pretty
good. And, the paint stays bright and colorful over a span of 10-15
years. Now, I'll grant you, modern paint may well be more color fast
than 1890 paint, and we don't have to cope with coal soot in the air
anymore.
Was I modeling a victorian house, I'd go for something like a medium
yellow body with yellow ochre trim, or barn red and forest green or
yellow and green. If I was modeling a '50's tract house, I'd go for a
pastel green or blue body and white trim.
Don Dellmann
David J. Starr <david...@analog.com> wrote in message
news:397771E6...@analog.com...
> Was I modeling a victorian house, I'd go for something like a medium
> yellow body with yellow ochre trim, or barn red and forest green or
> yellow and green. If I was modeling a '50's tract house, I'd go for a
> pastel green or blue body and white trim.
>
> David Starr
FWIW I LIVE in a "50's tract house" that's pale yellow with white & Redwood
trim. When I bought it, the trim was mustard yellow and "army olive drab",
talk about UGLY!
I used to have a friend (now sadly deceased) who was something of an amatur
architectural historian, and he would spend hours "ranting and raving" about
how "UN-authentic" Hollywood's representations of Victorian houses were,
being all white.
Don
--
Don Dellmann
don.de...@prodigy.net
http://www.geocities.com/don_dellmann
--
moderator WisMode...@egroups.com
Fred Monsimer
Martin Rosenfeld <rosen...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> I would like information on what most RR'sa did qabout 1989-1910 in
> regard to painting schemes. I believe most RRs used the same theme
(ie,
> buff with brown trim) for all stations. Did they use this same scheme
> for all structures, tool sheds, interlocking towers, MoW bldgs, etc.?
I am not sure what colors "most" railroads used, or how well the colors
weathered, but some railroads did use the same standard scheme for
sheds, towers, and stations. The Pennsylvania Railroad had several
schemes in use depending on the location and type of structure. There
was the buff and brown scheme used on wooden structures, but they also
had a two-tone grey scheme used on some wooden structures (I think this
was used more in sooty locations like yards and engine terminals,) and
there was a maroon and dark green scheme that was used on brick
structures. The PRR Technical & Historical Society printed a set of
color sample cards a few years ago and may still have some in stock. I
have a set, and find that the colors look better on the models if they
are "faded" a bit, to match photographs that I have seen. Modelers
also tend to paint all their buildings from the same bottle of paint,
without considering that one building may have been painted yesterday
and another may not have been painted for five years. Between fading
in the sun, soot from steam engines, rust from the gutters, and mud
splattering around the base of the building, there is a lot of
variation from one building to the next. If you are modeling a
specific railroad, that company's standard color would be a good
starting point, though. If you are designing a layout, you can choose
any colors you want; I am in a club whose wooden towers and stations
are painted yellow with orange trim, and whenever I build a new one, I
follow the standards set down before, but add a little weathering to
some of them. One station is going to have the painting crew "at work"
with half the building in fresh paint, and the other half still faded.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Dave B
Standards Manuals that cover the 1916-1918 era. The justification for
the original publication of these Manuals is the problem of variety in
colors and quality of the structures, signs, and equipment of the
railroad. Now to be fair the Southern Railway System was an aggregation
of numerous lines combined in 1894, so variation could not have been
surprising.
Two reasons for mentioning these manuals:
1. You see evidence that the pre-1910 era railroad structures in the
southeast probably had a lot of color or at least shade variations. You
can probably use just about any shade as long as you get the colors
right.
2. If you model the southeast, take a look at these manuals! The
standards created in 1916 lasted well into the middle of the century and
in some cases beyond!
Dave
--
_________________________________________
http://southern-railway.railfan.net/ay/
http://smrf.railfan.net/SMRF/
http://cvrr.railfan.net/cvmrr/
Alan Havens
<david....@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>
> The Southern Railway Historical Association sells two sets of MoW
> Standards Manuals that cover the 1916-1918 era. The justification for
> the original publication of these Manuals is the problem of variety in
> colors and quality of the structures, signs, and equipment of the
> railroad. Now to be fair the Southern Railway System was an aggregation
> of numerous lines combined in 1894, so variation could not have been
> surprising.
>
Does anybody have a street address or a URL for the
Southern Railway Historical Association? This sounds
like something I want to get.
Thanks in advance,
Alan
(To reply by email, remove 'z' from address
Bruce Balotti
quote
"To learn more about the SRHA, write us at P.O. Box 33, Spencer, NC
28159 or send us E-Mail at SR...@aol.com."
Bruce Balotti
Dave B
says...
> "To learn more about the SRHA, write us at P.O. Box 33, Spencer, NC
> 28159 or send us E-Mail at SR...@aol.com."
>
> Bruce Balotti
Thanks Bruce, I should have included the information in the original
post.