I want to repaint my Proto 2000 0-8-0, and I’d like to end up with a weathered hard working looking engine. Which would be the best Polly Scale, or other brand black paint to use first? I want to use only water soluble paint. I definitely don’t want a shinny looking engine (I like the look of Argo Jones’s engines. Thanks.
Take a look at Polly Scale Grimy Black…IMHO that is a good match for a hard working steamer…Be sure to fade your decals.
If you still want to keep the original lettering, then keep it. I’d only repaint if I wanted new graphics. Heavy weathering over factory paint in this case may yeild better results than repainting it lighter. [2c]
As Larry said, Grimy Black is good for a work horse steamer.
I just painted some Amtrak Superliner diaphragms with Poly Scale Grimy Black. Partly because it looks like weathered diaphragms, and partly because I already had the color in my paint collection [;)]
Here’s what Grimy Black looks like (the silver part is Polly Scale Stainless Steel):
I paint my steamers with dark gray auto primer from a rattle can. Sticks well, dries dead flat, covers anything, and is just the right coal sooty look.
I use 80 to 90% POLLY Scale Tarnished Black and 20 to 10% White.
Peter Smith, Memphis
Steam engines are black. Not gray, not “dirty black”…BLACK. Use black paint and then weather over it.
Notice that the entire back end of the engine and tender is essentially the color of ash. Notice that t he FRONT end of the engine, while splattered with mud and road grime, is still SHINY black. How will you replicate this effect if you start off with a medium gray base color?
I got suckered in to the whole “Black on model steam engines is wrong, because they turn into black holes and you can’t see the detail, so use gray” idea YEARS ago due to several articles in MR, RMC and the NMRA Bulletin. Thinking that the “experts” knew better than me, I painted my first brass engine using the exact paints and formulas they recommended.
Let’s just say that I’m less than pleased at the “accuracy” of their suggestions.
Thankfully, while I still have this arguement with a few diehard old-timers in the hobby industry, many other steam modelers are seeing the light and painting their engines the color they’re supposed to be: BLACK. Study as many color photos of steam as you can possibly find (they’re everywhere these days) and you’ll quickly become a convert.
Steam IS supposed to be a “black hole” when it comes to light. See a steamer at distance, and all you see is a black outline of an engine with some movement. Photograph a steamer close up in strong sunlight, and you get the same effect. I’ve been studying live steam since the 1970s, and have NEVER seen a “gray” steam engine, except for a couple of Indian 2-4-2T’s and a British Pacific that were painted that way in the first place.
I agree with you on one thing and that is, that steam engines are bla
Hi Peter,
Quoting the above, you’ve nailed down my arguement perfectly:
Your PERCEPTION is that pure black “isn’t right”, and that’s just fine. A very large part of this discussion will have to revolve around the twin ideas of artistry and individual perception, both of which can vary wildly.
But then again, look at another of your quotes:
[quote]
I agree with you on one thing and that is, that steam engines are black. This was pounded home to me when I was a teen ager in the 50
No question about it, real steam engines were painted gloss black in the US of A. And viewed out of doors under sunlight. Bright sunlight is 100 times as bright as even a well lit interior. Bright enough to reflect enough light off the black to let the eye perceive details, even details in the shadow of the running boards.
Indoors, on our layouts, the electric lights aren’t bright enough to show any detail at all on a pure black locomotive. All we can see is a sillouette. Where as dark gray reflects enough light under the feeble illumination of the train room to look about the way pure black looks under daylight.
Plus, the real things burned coal and the resulting continuous shower of coal soot soon covered the entire locomotive. Coal soot is not pure gloss black, it’s flat dark gray.
Actually, that’s not quite true. Stare at a black steamer under bright sunlight, and anything in shadows will get muddied out; the entire area between the underside of the running boards and about halfway down the drivers becomes a black hole. It’s when the sky is partly cloudy that our eyes (not the best optic device ever invented) can adjust and make out the details between “black” and “more black”.
That’s right: a silouette outline, black, of a black engine. That’s REALITY. Why would you want to make something less black if it’s supposed to be black in the first place?
Nope; actually, that’s your PERCEPTION of how things are SUPPOSED to look. You want to see the details, so you paint the engine gray. But the reality is that you CAN’T see much of the details at scale distances, because the engine itself becomes nothing more than a shadow.
Funny, that’s not what I’m seeing in that photo I posted of the NKP Mike. What I see is a pure, shiny black engine that’s still shiny and pure black in places, and TAN
Wow, things get intense in a hurry. I personally like the way Aggro Jones’s Challenger looks,maybe a touch too light for ME,but nice looking.Personally, I go for a happy medium between correct and asthetically pleasing to me.If you where going for a grayish loco, would t Floquil’s weathered black be a good choice? Im compilling and comparing weathering styles before I throw some paint on my new Big Boy. There seems to be alot of different techniques.[swg]
The wide variety of “blacks” is testiment to the different tastes of modellers.
In Floquil alone there is weathered black, steam power black, oily black,engine black,grimy black,and…black.
The real things burned many different grades and types of coal, all of which produced differing colours of soot. Soot is not always “flat dark grey,” nor does it cover every square inch of the loco. The real things also had a fair bit of oil in the exhaust, which also tends to land on the loco and alter the base colour. And then theres oil-fired locos, different again.
Ray is correct, you’re basing your argument on your perception, not an objective observation of how real locos look.
Mark.
One thing to remember about steam locomotives also, is that builder’s photographs of the locomotives were seldom shot in the original locomotive black. They were instead shot with the locomotive having been given a washable coating of dark gray, to highlight the various features for the railroads purchasing them. So if you’re going to paint a steam locomotive, don’t make the mistake of thinking that a builder’s photograph is going to be the accurate color. A great many modelers back in the late 'fifties and 'sixties somehow mistakenly thought that the builder’s photograph shades were accurate, and we ended up with a whole slew of dark gray land-battleship steamers on various model railroads.
Steam locomotives are basic black. THEN you trim them to your various railroad’s specifications, and weather them as you see fit for their type of service. But they’re steam locomotives, not U.S. Navy battleships.
Tom
Let’s just back up here a second.
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Not all steam engines burned coal - so the soot color would be different.
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Even coal soot is going to vary in color.
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When the soot would mix with the various oils/greeses, the end color would also be different.
One of my first jobs out of the military, was cleaning out the scrubbers of a coal burning powerplant, and the color of the fly ash varied. Some of it was a dark grey, most of it was a med grey that when it got wet turned dark, but it was all easy to see, and you could easily tell where the cracks were in the equipment, since the ash tented to collect there, and highlight them.
Funny thing, the ash almost always looked different, depending on the background color. Against a drk brown chair ( did I mention it got into everything ? ), it looked almost white, but in almost every occasion it washed out the base color, unlessed that item was washed off with water and some scrubbing. The blasted stuff even colleted at the corners of our eyes, turning them almost black, and you don’t want to know how it affected our noses - let’s just say that I was spitting dark grey for 2-3 days.
Where it mixed with water, there was a semi-gloss untill it dried, and once it did dry it was like a dirt clod, and would flake off the surface. Where it mixed
I agree with Ray, and I used to paint my locomotives gray previously. I was good friends with a custom painter and he always painted locomotives gloss black if that was what the prototype was painted. (He also did not believe in weathering and if someone wanted a locomotive weathered he would contract that out to somebody else.) I have now gone to painting my locomotives gloss black also (except for my PRR ones painted DGLE).
Rick
Why not mix your own?
OK Ray, I give up. you are correct, locomotives are black. The only comment I have is that they get gray very fast after they are exposed to the weather. Your web site confirms that you do great work. But, in most of the pictures of locos including the colored ones I see mostly gray. It seems to me that your example of loco 614 may illustrate an unusual case. Even so, my eye sees a black color in that photo that has a lot of subtle reflections that may be very difficult to achieve with one coat of flat black paint. As I mention in my previous post, the only way I have been able to duplicate some of these subtleties was in the distant past when I stained my locos with three coats of stove polish as shown in the posted photo of my bashed Bowser Mountain . As I stated, I am no artist and a quick review of my wife’s book on color theory didn’t help me very much in defending the use of gray. I do know that in the art world there is a debate about shadows and many say that shadows are always a shade of gray. In any event, keep up the great work and your excellent arguments that black should come before weathering. I guess though that in any argument these days, there seems to be no absolutes one way or the other but, only shades of gray.
Peter Smith, Memphis
I use Floquil grimy black and weathered black when I paint my brass locos. It’s “Black”, but you can still see the details under my model rr lighting. I’m not a great fan of ‘weathering’ my locos, so when I do, I do it lightly, as if my MR was a ‘good housekeeper’, and then I use the Bragdon self-adhesive weathering chalks. My particular steamers have a paint scheme of graphite smokeboxes and fireboxes, which I use by mixing Floquil dark graphite and Old Silver, about 70-30. Cylinder heads and trim are ATSF silver. It’s fairly close to the colors of my prototype railroad (Rio Grande).
Here’s a 2-8-8-2 fresh out of the paint shop. Haven’t weathered it yet. Frankly, I’m undecided if I want to, but if I do, it will be with ‘soot’ and some ‘dirt’ around the cylinders and drive wheels and trucks.
Tom