Does Tamiya or Rustoleum make a paint that is close to the color that they
use for their passenger car trucks.
Rivarossi passenger car trucks were grey, with a slightly metallic look to them. I always painted mine with black of some degree, then used a brush to pick-out the springs with a suitable colour, followed by a light weathering of the trucks and car, using an airbrush…
This one’s from Model Die Casting, but better-shows the colour of the sideframes, which are not the original trucks…
The only thing from IHC that I have is this modified Mogul, with a cab from a Bachmann Consolidation, a few added details, and a shortened and much-modified tender…
Here’s the tender during the modifications…
The usual advice is to not paint trucks pure black because in our indoor lighting it makes the trucks seem to disappear and the cars seem to be just floating on nothing.
When I painted AAR type freight trucks that were unpainted metal (not something that is seen anymore but there used to be brands of trucks that were shiny bare metal) I would use a rattle can “almost black” paint meant for outdoor grills - black but with just a hint of lighter shade to it. Perhaps it was Ace hardware’s own brand. Then I did highlighting of detail somewhat along the lines of Dr Wayne’s tutorial.
Rustoleum makes a dark dark gray almost charcoal gray primer - it reminds me of the dark gray almost black that you see on some modern military airplanes and now increasingly on custom painted automobiles for a certain stealth bomber look. I’d explore those.
Dave Nelson
The gray that IHC or AHM or Rivarossi used is light enough to bring out some detail and what I do is an application of DullCote to tame that slight metallic look that Doctor Wayne refers to, then some highlighting.
There is a decent amount of detail in the IHC/AHM/Rivarossi passenger car trucks. I paint mine to bring that detail out.
-Kevin