I just canceled my order with Internettrains yesterday and my order showed up today. Oh well! I just got home from work so I’m going to wait till this weekend to finishing layout the track, but I do have a question.
I bought a couple of bridges that came in black. I’m trying to remember when I last saw a black bridge in the southwest. I have seen a lot of red or gray primer bridges. Should I paint the black bridges another color or should I leave them black?
I have two Warren Truss Bridges and two Plate Girder Bridges. They don’t look very real to me.
Bridge color pretty much seems to depend on the owning railroad. I know that Rio Grande painted their bridges silver, SP pretty much left them black, other railroads used a reddish primer. I’d say go with what you’ve seen and are familiar with.
A color that has worked for me with black bridges is to lightly overspray them with Floquil Boxcar Red, which gives them a nice ‘used’ color. But as I said, go with what you see in the area you’re modeling.
BRIDGE PAINTING (and maintenance) is generally left to each particular RR.
RED is gennerally an Orange-Red lead or red oxide, and is geneally an ‘as-delivered’ primer for RR’s to paint over. The ‘Golden Gate’ bridge (S.F.) was painted in Red Lead for years.
Popular RR colors are BLACK, & ALUMINUM, with reverse color Lettering. I remember Santa Fe Girder Bridgese leading out of town over Cermak Rd. as Black with ‘billboard’ Silver lettering “'Ship & Travel Santa Fe” . Further out-of-town (Harlem Ave - Stickney) they still were still using Wood,.painted with creosote.
If Black bothers you too much, Buy some Floquil flat paint you prefer. If you want to decal, use a Gloss paint, and ‘dull spray’ over it.
Most of the bridges in my area are plate girder and they are either white or silver but typically, the paint shows lots of rusting and weathering. The few truss bridges I’ve seen are black but I don’t get close enough to see if there is much rusting.
I guess it’s the new shiny look that does not seem right to me. I’m going to have to pay more attention to the other details. I live near Barstow, CA and there are at least 3 railroads here and I’m not sure which railroad is witch. I see a lot of BNSF and Santa Fe. I also see Union Pacific and Southern Pacific trains pass through. I’m usually just so fascinated by the trains that I don’t really look at the bridges. I know an engineer for BNSF and he told me of a place were I can look down at were all three railroads meet, but I haven’t seen it yet.
Down here in south east Texas most of the bridges are silver - or rather should I say they were once upon a time… Now they’re mostly rust colored with a bit of silver peeking through here and there. And then there are those that you can’t tell what color they are because of all the grafitti on them.
CSX has alot of railroad bridges painted in various colors depending on the type of bridge and their location. Green is common for bridges located on the Western & Atlantic (CSX) in Georgia that were built after 1970. Bridges on the former Clinchfield were painted silver with black lettering such as the soon to be replaced Ex-CRR bridge over I-85 near Spartanburg, South Carolina. I-85 will be widened to six lanes from the current four lanes making replacement of the Ex-CRR bridge over the interstate highway necessary.
This bridge was originally either gray or black. I sprayed it Moss Green first, with the “fresh paint” section in silver. Then it got some rust paint brushed on, and finally a lot of “Instant Rust” because it crosses water.
You don’t need fancy equipment to do painting and weathering of bridges. I use rattle-can spray paint from the hardware store. Get yourself a can of Dul-Cote from a hobby shop. It does wonders for taking off that new plastic look.
The MP standard was One coat of Rust O Leum Aluminum paint (with 1 quart of dark blue for every 5 gallons of aluminum) for the first coat and straight aluminum paint for the 2nd coat.
While New Mexico and some other SW states love to pretty up their bridges in pastels and “earth tones” - which I think is nice - most of those out of the public eye are still in either black or silver or perhaps a dark green.
May I recommend a color that came out very nice when I used it the other day on a girder supported overhead crane… Testor’s puts out a color called “rubber”, obviously intended for use on model car tires and the like. It is (to my eye) a combination of black with a bit of bronze in it. The result is a flat blackish finish that IMHO looks great for bridges or any other girder type construction.
It doesn’t surprise me that the “desert” roads would paint their bridges silver. It would lessen the expansion and contraction in high heat to a degree. Whereas black would absorb more UV light and expand more silver will reflect the light.
As long as were talking colors here,I discovered that Testors Panzer Gray in the rattle cans is a close approx. of Poly scales Grimy black. Thats if you use spary cans.
The bridges Espee used here in Oregon were both Aluminum or Black. I used three of the Atlas plate girder bridges on the layout and painted them black followed by crystal coat. I then lettered the middle one using Microscale decal set 87-1148 for bridges. Dullcoat followed withh some slight weathering to finish up.
If the railroad paid for and built the bridge they will follow the the normal paint schemes developed by their Bridge and Building Department.
With the advent of the Interstate Highway System, bridges that go over the highway are subject to the rules of the governing state DOT. For example when I first worked for ODOT bridges were painted with red lead primer, then two coats of Aluminum final paint. After a while the Aluminum was changed to Gray and now it rotates between Gray, Green and Blue.
Up in Michigan they went for a while to Cor-Ten steel which rusts once, then the rust that forms prevents further rust from forming and keeps the steel from deteriorating further. Michagan also later went to the Gray, Green and Blue rotation.
The collection of bridge photos form Loather gave me a lot of ideas. I’m going to save that in my favorites. The photo from MisterBeasley is also a real eye-opener, I hadn’t thought of that. I’m defiantly going to try something like that on at least on of my bridges.
Some of you mentioned decals, which I had forgotten about, so I’m going have to do a little catalog searching. I bought a Walters catalog, but haven’t gone through it all yet.
On my way to work this morning, I noticed that all the bridges that I could see from the road were kind of gray looking. It could be sand blown aluminum or maybe dirty silver or gray primer, I’m not sure. I have got to start taking my camera to work with me. Everyday I see such great trains and wish I had a camera. Tomorrow I’m planning to take the wife up to the famous Tehachapi Loop and although there are no bridges on the loop it self, there are some bridges on the way that I can actually get up close to.
I found a can of Rust-Oleum Aluminum paint in the garage and I think its still good. I’m going to try that first in a little while, but if my memory is any good at all, I think it was a little bright. I have an assortment for spray paints and I’m going to experiment with various overspray colors to make it a little more sand blown.
This is off the subject but I thought was interesting. I was searching for some photos of bridges around Barstow and I came across this panorama view of the old train station, which has been closed for many years. The California Zephyr used to run through the Barstow Station. Use your curser to rotate 360 degrees
