Alright, I wasn’t able to find the answer anywhere, so heres whats up. I went to the LHS today to get a bottle of Floquil Rail Brown, because thats the color that Dave Methlie used to paint the track for the Stoney Creek RR, a 4x8 project thing that ran in the beginning of '06. The specific issue is the Feb. '06, where they are laying and painting the track (its the issue with Bruce Chubbs new Sunset Valley Oregon System).
On pages 60 and 61 they show the painted track while they’re ballasting, and the track has this awesome rusty brown look. However, I just painted some track on my diorama, and the color is more like a gray than anything else.
Could this just be because i didn’t mix the paint well? I shook it… but should I put a stick in it and try and actually stir it?
Are you sure you don’t have railroad tie brown? (not rail brown?) The rail brown I have is pretty rusty looking. Railroad TIE brown is pretty grey. A lot of people use Floquil Roof Brown for their ties. (it’s more brown than grey)
Are you actually using Floquil? Or the Polly Scale acrylic?
Don’t know if this helps. Left is Rail Brown. Right is RR Tie Brown.
I don’t know which article your talking about, but Rail Brown is definitely a rusty color.
I find that Floequil roof brown does a much better job at showing aged rust for rail sides. I will also use rust either dry brushed or mixed w/ the roof brown for newer rusted areas.
I never liked the color of the tie brown, almost end up looking like it has a greenish gray appearance. This may be due to the layout and shop lighting.
Just Shaking Floquil doesn’t always do the trick. You need to actually mix it. If you’re just playing with one bottle, a simple stick will likely do… If you want something for more use (also works with other paint), then get one of these from micromark. One of the few product endorsements you’ll ever see from me…
Be careful using it… It has two speeds. Stop, and bat out of hell. If you mistakenly raise it from the paint jar before turning it off, you WILL be splattered with paint. To clean it, simply dip it into a jar of thinner and turn it on. Runs on a AA battery.
Greg, if the colour is not what you want, buy a bottle of Caboose Red or Reefer orange and mix it with the brown until you get a shade that you like. I almost never use the colours as they come straight from the bottle. Scenery especially is an area where you’re allowed to be “creative”. [swg]
that color on the left is what I was looking for. I just painted some on an index card, and its more of a…diarhea green/brown than anything, with more of a lighter/greener hue on the edge where its not as thick a coat. I held that, as well as the diorama rail I painted, up to the screen to compare, and its neither of those colors…
this is retarded. I JUST WANNA PAINT MY DAMN TRACK. I wont have time this afternoon or tonight, but tomarrow i’ll get some pictures and post, because this is just stupid.
[%-)] My bottle of Floquil Rail Brown is pretty old. (pre Testors) Maybe they changed the mix?
I was confused when I bought that bottle because I wanted more of a brown color than rust.
It’s hard to judge their colors from their online swatches because all monitors are different.
(did you know they have color swatches on the Testors site?)
yeah I think i did… i didn’t base anything on those, tho. I held my index card up to your pic, and i even held my diorama up to it to compare colors. they were way off.
i’m at their site now… those color examples are just completely stupid. Rust isn’t beige…
my color is kind of like a mix between the color they show for Rust and the color they show for Rail Brown on the website.
I have a bottle of rail brown that is less than a year old and it matches the old floquil. I think either you need to use a stick or that handy paint mixer to make sure it is completely mixed. If it still looks foul, I think you may have got a bad bottle. Three years ago I saw three new bottles of what was labeled SP scarlet yet it looked nothing like their usual SP scarlet. So it can happen.
Rather than sit around and complain that things are stupid, let’s try to apply some logic to the problem. You looked at a color in a magazine picture and you want to copy the color. So far, we have involved:
The photographer taking the picture
The editor ‘adjusting’ the photo for publishing
The printer adjusting the copy to print
Then, based on the text, you buy the bottle of paint and complain it isn’t a perfect match. I wouldn’t expect it to match. There is no way you can try to match a color chip to something you’ll see on your computer. Factor in your video card and your monitor and all of the possible settings affecting color rendering…get the idea?
If you want a specific color or tone to your rails, you’ll have to experiment with a couple of pieces of rail and some paint until what you see in your mind matches what you see with your eyes. Coloring something on your layout is a very subjective issue…
When I decided to paint my rails, I saw a photo in Trains Magazine that showed very clearly a orange colored rust on the rails. I bought Rust, Grimy Black and Railroad Tie Brown paint and started to experiment with them until the color I created satisfied what I was envisioning in my head. I’m afraid that this area of the hobby is one in which we cannot simply open the bottle of paint and have what we want. Here’s a photo of my rusty rails…which on the screen looks totally different than what you’d see if you walked into my layout room.
I realize that whats on a computer monitor won’t match reality and whatnot, its just that the color isn’t even close. My stuff looks more like a brown with a diarhea green tint… kind of hard to explain.
I mean, I was just expecting to be pretty spot on because the article said that thats ALL that he used, and its definitely a rusty brown color where as this is a muddy, greenish brown.
yeah Don, that looks amazing. Did you use two different mixtures for the rails in that picture? The closest rail looks a bit rustier than the two background rails.
All of the rails in the photo were painted with the same batch of paint, so I’ll guess that the difference in color is attributed to the first rail being closer to the camera lens, thus getting more light into the camera lens.
It just occurred to me Greg, that you may have picked up an old bottle. It may be an analog paint mixture you are trying to apply to DCC rails. You may have to disconnect your DCC and temporarily connect some straight DC voltage until your done painting and the paint has had time to dry all the way.
Well, not to boil the pot, fellows, but when I was painting my track several years ago, I picked up the Floquil Rail Brown (spray can) and applied it, and it came out a kind of olive drab color. Definitely not what I was looking for, so I went back to my standard mixture of grimy black, boxcar red and dark gray.
BTW, Don, in case I haven’t mentioned it before, those rails are TERRIFIC!
Remember one other thing…thee is no “right” color for ails (that is unless of course, you’re painting them yellow with purple polka dots or some other wild application). Rails vary in color almost as much as the soils in this country do. Everything from a mineral red to almost black to “new rail” gunmetal-green. Any imagry from photos to videos to print will alter the color; it cannot be helped. If the writer added colors to the mix and didn’t explain that in the article, shame on him or her. That only causes the frustration that prompted this thread.
DonZ is absolutely correct; I have seen his track in person and it has an excellent look to it. That does not mean my track will have the same color, as the prototype for my railroad is some 1800 miles away from DonZ’s prototype, and is affected by minerals and chemicals that do not exist in the area he models, and vice-versa. And frankly, though the tempation may be there, I simply do not want to copy the “look” of his layout. I’m not building his layout; I am building a unique line with a look of my own choosing.
Where I have the advantage is having worked on the line I am modeling, so I know what the rail looks like, in person. And that is probably the best advice; don’t take a photo or video’s image for it, go out and see prototype rail for yourself (without tresspassing, of course). You will also find that the color changes from morning light to noon and back to evening.
Mixing colors is something everyone should plan on, regardless of what the instructions in an article or a label on a paint bottle may say. The article you speak of may have given you a good starting point; now mix the paint to YOUR satisfaction. Send photos…
