I hate boxcar Red!
Are you sure that you hate boxcar Red? Maybe you’re just not seeing it in the right lighting conditions.
Jeff
I like boxcars of all colors.
Actually, I think it is a really deep, durable red. I think they call it Tuscan Red. Why did they choose this color??
Must be all the lead in that paint.
Red is the only proper color for a box car except perhaps for a reefer which may be yellow.
Red also for caboose’s?
Respectfully,
The title of this thread is rather broad and vague. I assumed that you were going to ask or comment about the types of paint finishes used on railroad equipment.
Years back, single stage IMRON Polyurethane finishes was a popular option. It was used by some railroads, transit bus agencies and commercial truck companies. I worked at a transit agency back in the day and frequently applied various paint products on transit vehicles. Durability and appearancewise…IMRON, won hands down. Applied over a quality primer sealer or primer surfacer it was quite durable, retained it’s gloss under punishment for quite a while and was not too expensive. The downside to Imron was that if you applied it over a cheap primer, the chances of it cracking and chipping were high.
I remember reading a TRAINS Magazine article years back (not sure if it was the 80s or 90s) of a group of classic Santa Fe F-units that were cosmetically restored to the red, yellow & silver Warbonnet scheme with IMRON paint.
Eventually the EPA’s constant upgrading and tweaking of its laws caught up with DuPont and the price of the IMRON line products more than doubled in some cases. DuPont’s competition (PPG, BASF, VALSPAR) felt the impact as well. The days of purchasing one gallon of IMRON code 817 White for just $33 a gallon were clearly over!
In the past decade there has been a strong “political” push by the EPA and government bueracrats for the automotive & commercial paint manufacturers to “go green” and push water based paints. PPG ha
Red? Probably for the same reason barns were painted red. The paint was cheap and fairly durable.
Red for cabooses too. And we need to put cabooses back on freight trains.
I like cabooses…
I like mooses.
Curiously, one reason cited for why fire engines are red focuses on the proposition that red was the most expensive color, and that fire companies painted their engines red as a method of showing off.
And gooses…
Your not suggesting we paint mooses box car red are you? And besides, box car red and Tuscan Red are only cousins on the color chart, really cousins that don’t like each other.
For automotive body crews, the primary headache with strong reds, like the “traditional” tomato red used on many fire engines, is that regardles of the hue variance…it’s often a pain to match exactly. Paint a panel a bright red and put it out in the weather for 5 months. During the 5th month, paint another panel the same red and compare it to the first panel and you’ll see that the two panels won’t match perfectly.
Additionally, with regards to non-metallic solid colors, paints with high red pigment content tend to be more expensive than the other solid color groups.
Yes, if the ochre on your farm was red, you would dig it up and mix it with some carrier (I think buttermilk was used at times), and paint your barn red. Very cheap, unless your labor was expensive.
I guess skim milk would not be as good a carrier.
The interior of early Amtrak passenger cars used to use some really “interesting” interior colors.
Remember the carpeting Amtrak used on the interior walls of coaches???
Wouldn’t that make the color a light, milky red?