I realize that there ARE Many Different colors used on cars, but…it seems that the Brown/Red, Rusty/Brown color was used by many different railroads for many years.
How did that, kind of, become the default box car paint scheme.?
Thank You
Just guessing, but I suspect that the reason a lot of boxcars were painted red, or a variation thereof, was for the same reason barns were painted red.
Red paint was easy to make, relatively inexpensive, and durable.
Pb3O4, “red lead” was a cheap, easy to make protective pigment.
I’d say it was for the same reason that I see all the dark red BNSF grain hoppers. The rust doesn’t show.
Curiously, one of the legends of why fire trucks are red involved the fact that it was expensive, and early fire companies who painted their rigs red were showing off.
Big difference between box car red and fire engine red. On starts dull and stays that way with age - the other is kept polished so the firemen can see themselves in the paint.
Railroad cars were traditionally painted the color of the contamination that would get on them. Oil and coal cars were painted black, cement hoppers were painted gray, and boxcars were painted to match the rust that would develope with age.
Red lead (not iron oxide), as well as white lead, pigment was widely used for years because it was a good preservative. It is a dull red. Look at barns and many railroad buildings besides boxcars and hoppers.
I’d add that before 1859, all paint was based on natural materials like plants, minerals, or animal products. This meant the price was determined by how common or rare the ingredients were. Blue and purple were expensive to make (using ink or something from a sea creature IIRC) so were “royal” colors, since only they would afford it.
Iron is pretty common, like in red clay, and could be used to make a cheap, strong brownish-red paint, so became common for any wooden outdoor structure - barns, boxcars etc. When artificial colors came in, people continued painting their barns red, but when they asked for ‘red paint’ at the hardware store, they were given red paint that was actually red, rather than brownish-red.
BTW in the 1870’s -1880’s there were a lot of freight and passenger cars painted straw yellow.
Everyone may find this interesting, it’s an 1835 recipe for farm paint.
To Make Farm Paint
Skimmed milk, four pounds or one half-gallon
Lime, six ounces
Linseed oil or neatsfoot, four ounces
Color, one and a half pounds
And for outside painting, add two ounces of slacked lime, oil, and turpentine.
Red oxide was preferred for the color, red clay was also used.
So Right ! That concoction home brewed to paint barns seemed to last longer than the actual structures…And then you get down to the itenerant sign painters. Those were the guys who traveled, mostly in the South, finding the exact structures that they could paint and provide signage for the makers of ‘Mail Pouch Tobacco’, and of course, [See] ‘Rock City’! My guess is that the ‘Burma Shave’ signs were pained in a shop, and sent out with individuals who were paid to plant them alongside highways? [:-^]
Remember the silo-sized Schlitz beer cans?
Remains of a sign painted on the moutainside facing B&O’s Harpers Ferry station pictured in 1937.
How could you tell? Every photo I’ve seen of those was black and white? [:-^]
Well, there were colorized (tinted) photos…
It is a curious problem, though. We rarely think of how colorful things were “back in the day.”
I’ve found evidence that my house was once painted peach, or something close, with brown trim. Actually sounds rather attractive.
“See Rock City”–a barn was not a barn without a Rock City sign.
Even though I visited Chattanooga many times when I was in college, I never went to Rock City–I was a poor student, and did not feel that I could afford the admission.
If it didn’t have a “See Rock City” ad, it definitely had this ad: “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco, treat yourself to the best.”
As an aside, I’ve seen birdhouses shaped like barns with a “See Rock City” ad on the roof. I think that you can find them at Cracker Barrel restaurants.
Per usual…very interesting Info/Responses.
Thank You 
Didn’t the red paint of old contain a lot of lead as a main ingredient to help prevent rust? When I was a kid (long ago and far away…) in the late 60’s I lived in Alaska. In the fall, prison inmate work crews would go around and paint all the metal highway bridges. Everyone reffered to the paint used by them as red lead paint. It turned the bridges bright, dark red but they would fade to rusty brown by mid-summer.