Hello from down under
Something that I have suspected for a while is a difference in the colour of the Yellow/Grande Gold/Orange that has come out of the D&RGW paint shop.
I am hoping for more photographic evidence of this, particularly with regard to F units.
I have seen many photos with a variation in ‘yellow’ on hood units, like this photo -
But, this is the first time I have seen what appears to be a variation on F units -
Hoping people can help with more photos (of F units).
Thanks
Rob
Yep, there was some variation. But beware, sometimes the variation you perceive can often be due to the lighting conditions and age of the paint too. I am pretty sure the lighting is responsible for the difference there as the single stripe F’s pretty much looked the same IIRC - I’ve looked at quite a few photo’s. The lighting in one photo in a book I have made me think a batch of Thrall hi side gondolas were painted oxide red, but they were really black, and the lighting just happened to fool the eye. In your photo example, the sides of the B unit are bright in the sun and look lighter. The nose of the F9A 5774 is a bit dirty and not in direct light, and looks a bit darker.
It does appear that a lighter shade of grand gold was used for example, on the four stripe passenger trains vs the single stripe paint later on in the mid 60’s.
Join the Rio Grande Yahoo Groups email list where alot of the Rio Grande fans and afficianado’s hang out and you can get some feedback there.
Unless you see examples in photos, it is unbelieveable how much the appearance of colors can vary in photos. A post on a military forum showed photos of a modern Mercedes truck in North Africa. The apparent color varied from a light sand yellow to gray depending on the lighting conditions and the background. The photos were taken a different locations and at different times of the year.
I’ve seen photos of another truck that were all taken at the same time, same roll of film. There was also a wide variation in the apparent color.
Rob,
There appears to be different ‘paint’ in different era’s as well. Follow the link below for more information:
http://www.utahrails.net/drgw/rg-diesel-paint-schemes.php
Jim
Don Stracks website Utah Rails is a great resource for D&RGW and other western fans.
The paint in the example of wrecked F units is IMO, the same more than likely.
Here’s another good website for reference to use in conjunction with the Utah Rails page linked above:
Sometimes the railroads themselves changed the shade – the Chicago & North Western went through several very different shades of yellow at various times. And within the “same” yellow different batches even using the same formula can look different. That is why knitters want to make sure their wool for a given sweater or other project all comes from the same dye lot. Same with paint.
The process of aging (combined in some cases with chemical washing on an almost daily basis for passenger engines) creates differences too – one CNW yellow turned almost white with age, while another turned more and more orange.
But the big thing to be watchful for is that you cannot necessarily trust the colors of books, magazines, and photos on the web. In at least one case of a color photo book it is evident that at some point the printing process was “instructed” to unify the blue skies as well as the yellow engines – even when supposedly the prototype yellow had changed. it all looked right but was not necessarily something you want to totally trust. I know when downloading my own photos, or when scanning negatives and slides on the computer, that quite a bit of variation in color is involved – even within the same photo.
And my home PC shows very different colors than my laptop for the very same photos.
Dave Nelson
Thanks fellas
Guess I was hoping for a better reason for all the variations that we get on purchased models from the different manufactures.
Will have to go with the LACQUER to ENAMEL and AGE of paint.
ALSO, thanks for the WEB sites, much appreciated.
Rob
I’m not sure what you wanted to hear. There are variations in paint on models because manufacturers do different things to try to match to the prototype. Let me give you a common example. Many model manufacturers like to brag in the past that they matched the model paint to actual paint chips from the prototype. The problem with that is the actual paint matched to paint chips from the prototype looks much different when scaled down to HO and viewed in indoor lighting, and very often wrong. My experience is that models paint looked far too dark.
By way of example, Atlas painted their D&RGW GP40’s which were supposed to match the Kansas City Orange large herald logo used on the second hand Ex-Conrail GP40’s and the models looked a very deep reddish orange, too much so. But they apparently tried to be faithful to the real thing. Problem again is that the real paint doesn’t scale down to HO indoor lighting and “look” right to us. I’ve seen this umpteen times. I’ve seen it discussed by Liz Allen and Dave Hussey on the Trainorders forums when discussing painting models.
Getting paint right on models is often a tricky process, and one which has vexed modelers for a long time. Speaking as a D&RGW fan, Proto 2000 got some of their models pretty close to the right orange, such as their GP30’s and GP60’s but on other it looked horribly reddish dark orange (compared to prototype photo’s) on the SD45’s, SD50’s and SD9’s. I didn’t buy P2K’s SD45’s and SD50’s because of this paint issue and instead bought Athearns SD50’s, SD45’s which looked far better in the