Acrylic paint matching suggestion / advise for Walthers Proto 89’ Bi-level Auto Carrier Milwaukee Road

Can any one suggest an acrylic paint to match the warm yellow used on the Walthers Proto 89’ Bi-level Auto Carrier Milwaukee Road. See photo.

Thank you!

I don’t have a specific color to recommend to you, but I do have a suggestion similar to what I do in such a situation. Once I find a photo with a good color representation such as the Milwaukee Road yellow in your photo, I take the photo to my local Hobbytown USA and try to match the color in the photo to the actual color of the paint. I did that when selecting the most appropriate shades of red and gray to paint some Monon passenger cars.

I do recommend Tamiya Acrylic paint for this purpose. I began by looking at the color of the plastic cap. Then I turn the paint bottle over and look at the botttom of the bottle to see the actual color.

Rich

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Hello Riich

Thank so much for sharing your tips on color matching. I greatly appreciate it.

Cheers
M

I live in Japan, and the regulations and paint selection here are different, so I’m sorry I can’t give you any proper advice. Also, I’m not very good at painting, so I mainly use spray cans (rattle cans). Home centers sell a lot of spray cans for styrene resin, so as long as we don’t mind a small difference, we won’t have any problems. If the area to be painted is small and it’s just a touch-up, I mix the paint appropriately, adjust the color, and paint with a brush.
Asahipen Creative Color Spray
Nippon Paint Mini Hobby Spray

By the way, I remember that the paint color of the Milwaukee Road, along with the Chessie System, was called Federal Yellow. I don’t know what the Federal Yellow Book, from which the name comes, is. The following models are both Walthers AirSlide covered hoppers released in 1986-1987.


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Thank you for your very helpful tips and suggestions color matching my the Milwaukee Road Autorack.

I am not curtain, but I believe (Federal) Yellow Book might be a reference to the Yellow Pages (a printed phone book that listed business and services

This not a fact, but a theory.

Thanks again.

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The Federal Yellow Book is easy to find with a search, and it is immediately clear that the cover is yellow. However, I can’t find any evidence that this is the basis for the yellow name of Milw and Chessie. And I don’t understand what this book is about. Can someone show me them?

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There are several yellows used on railroad cars. Can you tell them apart?

MKT Sloan yellow: A favorite for railroad cars and buildings since 1934. Named after Matthew S. Sloan, who served as president from 1933 to 1945.

UP Armor Yellow: See UtahRail.net.

CP Rail Multimark yellow: A mark was left when the roof walk of an MDC-Roundhouse insulated & heated boxcar was removed. A retarder was mixed into the color mixture and applied with a brush. For an explanation of Multimark, see Wikipedia.

TTX yellow: I found the perfect color rattle can at a Japanese hardware store and bought a dozen.

BN caboose ends: I’ve used Tamiya Camel yellow to touch up an Athearn BB model.


By the way, it’s hard to imagine where this “Camel” came from these days. Everyone of our generation knows it was an F1 race car.

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Do you need a major repaint or just touch-ups? For touch-ups, I take a picture of the item on my cell and go to a craft store and look for a close match in the acrylic paint section. Small bottles are usually sold cheap - so I buy 2 or 3 that are pretty close. I’m not very good at mixing paint, but obtaining a slightly darker color can be achieved by adding a very small amount of black. Once satisfied, I will apply the paint with a small brush (touch-ups, right?). Sometimes, the color will change a bit too much to my liking when it dries. When that happens, I try again. Once I get a pretty close match, I cover the thing up with some weathering effects. It usually does the job. It’s rarely perfect, but it’s not like there are Ferraris out there in the real world… If you need to repaint the entire car, keep in mind that paints in the real world differ from one car to another due to various weather conditions and the paints used (e.g., the mix is not always exactly the same from one year to another, depending on the paint and the amount of solvents used, from what I hear).

Good luck!

Simon

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Thank you for the response, the suggestions and the tips. I appreciate your help. I am doing a patch.

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