I’ve been modeling CNW equipment for a while which you would think makes one an epert on yellows. However, I’ve been working on some UP stuff recently and am finding problems matching stuff. I am painting a pair of PA/PB-1 sets for Union Pacific that I intend to often match up with UP passenger cars. I have the Kato smoothside set and would like the yellow to be close to these. I picked up the Polly Scale UP Armour Yellow and tried that. However, the result is a dark kind of mustard yellow (I am putting this down over a white base coat), which is much different than the lighter more golden color more often seen with UP equipment…particularly passenger cars. Is there an out of the bottle paint that will work better for UP yellow. I don’t care to exactly match the Kato smoothside passenger cars, but there is a big difference between mustard and golden yellow and I would like to be closer to the more golden color. Thanks for your help.
Eric
You can give PollyScale’s ATSF Yellow a try… It’s got less brown than the UP Armour Yellow so it doesn’t look as “mustard”.
You can probably mix the two shades in various proportions to get a pretty close match to the Kato passenger cars.
Hope this helps!
yes, as stated…it’s “Armor” yellow and if there is any gray in the model use “Harbor Mist” grey…there is also some red in UP equipment…it’s not any specific color of red so a basic “Red” or a “Caboose” or “Fire Engine” red will work …most of the red on UP locos is striping and the red decals can be used anyway…I’d use the color that’s called for for prototype even if it don’t match…chuck
i use modelflex rail box yellow most of the time for touchups and painting add on parts for most brands equipment. it’s a pretty good match,but can be tinted to really close it in.
I have been collecting UP models for over 40 years & I bet that if I put 30 or 40 different cars/freight/passenger/locos, lined up together there would be 20 to 35 different Armor Yellows! Look at the real ones - the color varies as to age and cleanliness. Just get it close - perfect dosn’t exist! Lou
Yea on a freight consist it doesn’t really matter if the color doesn’t match exactly…
But back during the Age of the Streamliners when luxury passenger trains like the 20th Century Limited were popular, I think the passenger train sets would have pretty closely-matched paint schemes…