Main colors for coal cars were boxcar or iron oxide red with white lettering, or black with white lettering.
A couple of exceptions are below
Chessie had black cars with yellow lettering
Western Maryland had some cars that were gray with black lettering
Hope this helps.
work safe
Morpar,
I have seen a set of Athearn C and O 34’ hopper cars that are 2 bay and has smooth panels as a experiment. These are painted silver with black lettering. Maybe this will help.
Mines rely on steady supply and did not view hopper color as necessary. I have to say that black or red was the going colors because it was cheaper for the prototype to paint them that way.
I encourage you to paint them any way you like. It is your railroad and there are alot of ways to paint hoppers. (Or anything else for that matter)
Good Luck, Lee
Thanks for all the input. I’m really leaning towards a light gray with black lettering, as I can make my own decals. The red is also an idea that is appealing, and I am going to need some white decals made for the boxcars anyway. I might even paint them in different color batches to see what I like. Thanks again to all.
The light gray will show coal dust weathering very well, I think you’ll like that choice. For my own railroad, what I’m doing is painting the insides and underbody of my hoppers black, and then painting only the vertical surfaces red; this is in keeping with my overall paint scheme of red and black. I am supposing that the railroad would not want to bother with red paint where it isn’t going to be seen and where it will only get dirty. My decals will still be white paint, as this is my scheme, but I could just as easily have gone with black as you are doing. Maybe you might want to do the same, just paint gray on the sides.
If you do paint anything solid black, I recommend mixing a little bit of light gray or white into your black, to create a color that is really a dark charcoal color. This will let you see details better, and will show off a good weathering job much better. I model N+W (in addition to my fictional road) and so I’m going to have a LOT of black hoppers, but I’m painting them all just slightly lighter than true black for this reason. They’ll all get plenty of coal dust later, which will settle into the cracks and highlight the details.