There was an interesting topic about the red roof on steamers.
I remember reading an article long ago about people that could analyze (don’t remember the process) the gray shades from a black and white photo and determine the color scheme of a locomotive. Sure it wasn’t that perfect, but still gave an idea about what it could have been. Have you heard of it…
One of my HO steamer project was to recreate a 1880’s locomotive. When I colorized the picture of the inaugural train for the local parish, I found out there was evidence the locomotive wasn’t just plain black. We all know how many steamers have the firebox in a graphite matte color and the rest in a more glossy black. However, on this picture, it was clear that the firebox was glossy and the locomotive was in an other shade (maybe black, but with a different finish). I even suspect the cab and the drivers to be in an other color… What I can say is that these 4-4-0 were second hand from the Great Western built in Rhode Island Shop in 1873 (ex-GW #292 and ex-GW #300, they were acquired by the Grand Trunk in 1882 and sold to QRL&P in 1906). Exhuberant colors schemes were popular at the time… Got any informations about R.I. engine colors?
I joined the colorized picture. The passenger cars are in the right color, the loco… I’m not sure at all…
And a original picture of the Great Western Railway in Toronto. A great scene to model for a 1860 enthusiast. The buildings are of a kind we don’t see anymore
Many years ago I read an article; (don’t remember the mag. or the year) that indicated the boiler jacketing was a stove pipe color. The article explained how to reproduce this on a 4-4-0 kit. I think it must have been on a cast (metal) boiler as it is a chemical reaction. Maybe this will trigger memories or knowledge from others. I wonder how this look would be done with paint on a plastic 4-4-0?
The “stove pipe” color referred to a corrosion-resistant finish applied to sheet metal. It was sometimes called “Russian iron” or “Russia iron.” Its color could range from a silvery gun-metal tone to greens, blues, or browns.
Sheet metal treated in this way was often used for boiler and cylinder jackets in the nineteenth and even the early twentieth century. The jacket was an outer covering for the insulation wrapped around the actual boiler pressure vessel, which is typically not visible on a working locomotive.
The smokebox and smokestack, which unlike the jacket had the heat of the exhaust gasses on their inner surfaces, were more commonly painted black, although sometimes special heat-resistant paints or a graphite coating were used. Wooden cabs could be varnished or painted, and tender tanks were often elaboately decorated.
For a good historical look at nineteenth-century locomotive finishing, see the book American Locomotives, by John H. White.
Another good source is the EarlyRail Yahoo Group which is devoted to pre-WW1 modeling. Early engines up through the 1870’s could have been painted and trimmed with a wide variety of colors, pinks, teals, turquoise, wine, reds, greens, yellows. Tender striping might have 4 or 5 colors in it. In addition to Russian iron (which was made by hammering iron plates together with carbon) boilers were painted all sorts of colors.
It was quite common to paint passenger cars shades of yellow in the 1800’s.
However by the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the colors became more subdued in deference to the cost and styles of the day.
Thanks for the input Dave… I’ll take a look at that group you pointed out. Trying to model HO 4-4-0 from the old time is always a tricky endeavour.
I always wondered if some locomotives from the 1870’s that survived in service until 1900-1910 kept their exhuberant paint scheme. I say that because the QRL&P was a branchline that used late 1880’s passenger and freight cars until the end of the branchline in 1959. They were keeping their investment low and maintained old material in good state. I wouldn’t be surprised at all that a “russian iron” finish with a painted cab survived until the engine was scrapped in 1906 but with other parts painted in black… Well, that is
my part of search to do in my area local archives…
One thing about boiler color and “Russian (sometimes “Prussian”) Iron” is that it apparently when knew was very shiny and reflective. So someone making a painting of an engine might color the boiler blue because it was reflecting the sky color, not because the boiler really was painted blue.
BTW a tip I picked up in TV production - under the right lighting, the best way to get white in black and white pictures is to use a light green. For some reason it can come out whiter than white, which sometimes looks light gray to the camera. So, if you see an engine that appears to have a boiler that looks white (I’ve seen an example where the person writing the caption assumed the entire boiler was covered in graphite like the smokebox and firebox) it’s probably actually white (kinda like Great Northern engines).
I agree with you, it’s tedious and tricky to determine colors from black and white. Just read some threads on Early Rail groupe and looks like I’m not alone in this boat. However, I though about it twice and since the engine was a GTR property before being acquired by QRL&P, there’s a lot of chance that they only replaced the GTR letters on the tender by the HJB iniatials of the president (Horace Jansen Beemer). Now, I just need to find out what was the habitual colors for GTR during that time. Should be fairly easy (maybe I’m too much optimistic!) since the Grand Trunk was a major railway system at the time.
Prussian iron finishes could be extremely beautiful from what I’ve heard. I think it’s a process akin to gun blueing.
Anyhow on some eariler B&A motive power I know the color schemes included the likes of “Brewster Green” for boiler jackets with “Pullman Green” Tenders…Silver striping and lettering, graphite black smoke boxes… Earlier era (late 1800’s through the 20’s) finishes must of been striking in real life.
It’s to bad the “golden age” of railroading isn’t easily modeled. An Atlantic with a Victorian treatment is an elegant machine.
That had to be something. Imagine at this time, people lived mainly on farms with not that much technologies and seeing these beautiful and colorful engines roaming throught the countryside… They called it progress at that time, we now see it as nostalgia…
I work in architecture and I often worked on old building from that ere, let just me say that the houses and other objects were also extremely colorful in late 19th. If black and white pictures could turn in colors, we would be surprised to see an extremely lively and colorful environnement.
That’s something I always think about. I get the impression that folks cared quite a bit more about the appearance of things. Think about it…What tops the “Beaux Arts” architectural movement during the early 20th century. If you ask me architecture has been in a backslide ever since.
It’s always hard to criticized modern architecture because there’s often a lot of thought behind it, but it rarely shows. In an other hand, many ugly buildings just defigured our cities back in the 60’s and 70’s that can be forgotten. But I agree that the workmanship is almost zero and there is no more things such as “Pride” on a building site…
In my area, they wiped out almost every building that was related to railways. It’s a miracle the terminal station (Gare du Palais designed to match CPR’s Chateau Frontenac Hotel in Quebec City) survived the urban plan that was going to level it to the ground.
In an other hand, model railroading was always an excellent school for preservation since many modellers take data from buildings, cars and trackages that may be gone forever leaving no memories…
Yup…Their does seem to be an interesting ultra-modern trend coming to fruition. I really like some of the asymetrical designs coming out…Anyhow, sorry for the thread drift!
As many pictures of elegant 20’s loco’s I’ve seen their are also plenty of overtly done victorian monstrosities…
IIRC artificially colored paint was first developed in 1859; before that, the price of the paint was determined by how rare or how common the plant, animal or mineral was that was used to color the paint. Barns and Boxcars were painted tuscan red because it was dirt cheap…literally, as it was made from dirt or clay that contained iron ore elements in it.
Anyway, once artificially colored paint became common in the 1870’s-80’s, it seems people went nuts painting things. I recall an old house on “This Old House” that had been built around 1875 and they determined that including all the different trim colors the house had originally had something like 11 different colors of paint on it!!
Even railroads got into it - “White Mail” trains with cars of cream and green were common, and engines were painted a variety of colors - dark reds, blues, etc. Straw yellow was also common for freight and passenger cars.
This seems to have started to die down a bit by the 1880’s. By 1890 the gaudy paint and balloon stacks of the woodburners seem to have largely been replaced by basic black engines with straight “shotgun” stacks, with a graphite smokebox and firebox and maybe a tuscan red roof being the only coloring.
We used to call it “REZ” paint here, but I don’t know how to spell it, probably some company name badly translated in french. My brother still have farm buildings painted with that thing. The texture is not similar to paint we are used to, something like if it dye the wood boards.
A few old time 4-4-0 survived until the 1920’s in Canada, but I also suspect that all the colorful scheme disappeared between 1890’s and 1900’s while looking at photos.
Was there a special reason why the smokebox was graphite?
There has been a lot of discussion of Russia Iron over the years. The color is the result of the process, not a coating. Variations in lighting made some Russia Iron appear different in coloring. Here are some links on the subject.
smokeboxes were commonly painted with a mixture of graphite and oil. even with a woodburner the temperature of the smokebox was upwards of 600 degrees. the paints available at the time would blister up off the metal as fast as it was painted on, graphite wouldn’t. graphite could appear anywhere from silver to black depending on how fresh the job was and how much dirt had gotten stuck in the oil.
There was an interesting topic about the red roof on steamers.