What color of paint is used on this boxcar. Is it Boxcar red or a Southrn variation?
http://southern.railfan.net/images/archive/southern/freight/box/sou524052571fortworthtx.html
Thanks,
Andrew
You probably can take that photo to the hardware store and have them scan the color and come up with a mix for you.
Looks like mineral red to me.
I’d say it’s ‘Boxcar Red’. [:D] Boxcars are painted that “mineral red” color because back before artificial colors, the cheapest and one of the most long-lasting paints could be made from soil that had iron ore particles in it, which is common throughout the US (it’s literally “dirt cheap” cause it’s made with dirt!!). It created kind of a rusty-red colored paint. (BTW that’s why barns are painted red, except that when artificial paint came along, the generic “red paint” farmers bought became something closer to fire engine - or caboose - red.)
Matching a particular car (esp. from a photo) is always a judgment call. Accuflex (IIRC) makes ‘light tuscan red’, ‘medium tuscan red’ and ‘dark tuscan red’ which are all variations of ‘boxcar red’. Plus of course, a weathered car will look darker (or lighter) than it did when freshly painted!! [%-)]
[#ditto]
Between the many different paint manufacturers, different railroad preferences and degree of sun-bleaching and other weathering, there were about as many different shades of boxcar red as there were box cars. OTOH, you are lucky enough to have a VERY GOOD color photo of the shade you want. Perfect for comparison with custom-mixed paint - dry, on a surface equivalent to the side of the model car so the color won’t give you any unwanted surprises.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I have boxcars of many different colors but the ones I have the most of are mineral red, oxide brown and hunter green.
I remember seing those cars when they were new, or nearly new. The SP ran almost solid trains of these to the Ford plant in East LA. I don’t know what they were carrying but presumably something auto-related. [:)] In my memory, they were a very bright boxcar red and by bright, I mean glossy. It was a real contrast to the green on the slogan. So, if I was modeling these as new, or almost new, I’d use Boxcar Red coated with Glosscote instead of the usual Dulcote. Once they started to weather, I don’t have a clue as to what they may have looked like since they only ran these trains for about a year and then never did again. California wasn’t a good place to see many Southern boxcars.
If I’m not mistaken, Floquil offers a Southern Freight Car Brown, which should be pretty close to your photo. There are very few instances where I use any paint straight from the bottle without altering the colour to some degree. Even when painting a number of similar cars, a little variation in colour can provide a good first step to the weathering that you do later.
Wayne
Well, the color is obviously red and that is a boxcar so it must be Boxcar Red!!!
Doesn’t this remind you just a little bit of the old: what has one eye, one horn, flys, is purple, and eats people???