As the name implies I am a DL&W and EL fan. I ordered and received a 10-5 Spirit of Youngstown passenger car recently. Detail= fantastic, paint color, not so much. I called the company to express my dissapointment and was informed that the EL dinning car preservation society and the EL historical & technical society preapproved the color. That may be so, but in my opinion the grey shows with a tint of tan on the Rapido cars. Rapido doesn’t come close in color to any other mfgs. (Athearn,Genesis,P2K,IHC,Stewart…) color or for that matter to any other paint mfgs. color. They say no one else expressed this opinion. So am I alone? Anyone notice this too? [C):-)]
Yours is not the first complaint written here about the paint schemes in some instances. Rapido claims to have sought the best information attainable in order to present a good product to the market.
People’s memories, and dated images, are generally not very reliable. The essences may be truly there, but the finer details that make the whole what it is get washed away over time. Archivists will often warn the public that photographs taken even 40 years ago will not look like the image that was rendered by the developer at the time, and even then the first impression is only ever an approximation to the real thing…with high fidelity or otherwise.
So, if we are to take Rapido at their word, they did the best they could with the resources available. The rest is just user/item inteface. Or, is that inter-faith?
Maybe Athearn,Genesis,P2K,IHC,Stewart,etc are painted the wrong colour?
That’s a very fair summary.
I do all of the painting diagrams for our products. I will generally contact the relevant historical society or prominent modellers and ask opinions as to what is the best color. I also surf SIG discussion groups to see if the topic has been covered. For the Erie cars, I was told to match the Walthers colors, so we did. For the Erie-Lackawanna coaches we made, I believe I tried to match a Floquil paint sample - I honestly can’t remember as it was in 2006. My contacts at the ELDCPS seemed happy with the result, so we kept the same color for the 10-5 (a proper EL prototype rather than a stand-in).
In some cases, I have chosen to go against the grain. The NP cars out there were so vastly different from the color chips sent to me by the NPRHA that I decided to go with the chips instead. There will sometimes come a time when you say “match what’s out there and a lot of people will be happy or go with what the experts say is right, even though it may not match what people already have.” Same with t
I model UP and have something Armor Yellow from about every manfacturer for the past 40+ years
NO TWO ARE THE SAME!!!
THE SAME FOR “BOXCAR RED”!!!
Colors fade, get dirty, and are applied by different shops in the real RR world - many making their own mixes!!
Look at the different shades as "weathering!![:D]
Lou, as a long-time UP modeler, I couldn’t agree more. Not only is there not two samples of Armour Yellow that match but Harbor Mist Grey is even worse. Just try to get three UP modelers to agree on the correct shade of green on the anti-glare panels UP uses on most locomotives. [:)] I’ve saw the real thing for almost 30 years and I’m not sure that UP even had matching colors between new locomotives and repaints. I can remember many times seeing trains with five new or repainted engines on the head end and all five were slightly different shades of yellow. Maybe “slightly” isn’t even the correct term since they showed up quite differently on slides (remember those?).
Now, add the effects of weather, dirt, gime, and just general roadbed dust and colors changed even more. I can remember seeing UP engines that worked the Kaiser iron ore trains regularly that looked like they had a roof painted pink. [:O]
Given the fact that Jason and Rapido seem to have done their homework to the best of their ability, I would tend to trust their color rather than my memory, especially from cars which haven’t been seen in 35 or 40 years. Jason, it sounds like you’ve gone the extra mile to try and match prototype colors and I salute you for that. Many manufacturers just slap the closest color they have on hand and call it good.