With the old solid bearing trucks (without roller bearings) what was the color of the wheels? I would guess it would depend on the color of the dust in the area of use. However, with the journal bearings, was there oil and grease on the outsides of the wheels. I have been using roof brown, which matches closely the overall color of roller bearing wheels.
Can’t anybody help, here? Have I made enemies of all of you?
Got any old color photos or movie footage you could check?
I have no idea since I model the 1980s, and that’s all roller bearings by then.
Im degressing back in my memory banks, more decades ago then I care to count as a wheel shop foreman.
Plain bearing (non roller type) wheels sometime were rather grubby. The grime build up could get rather thick as oil attracts dirt. As I said sometimes, mostly they were not noticably different in appearence then the roller bearing. Come to think of it, a lot had an oil streak from the journal to the rim, probly when the rip track people removed the axle?
If the rear seal of a roller bearing went south sort to speak, it to would could have a greasey wheel plate.
We pulled wheel, recon axles and remounted about 120 sets a day. Our wheels were delivered on special wheel cars.(flat car)
Based purely on my memory (not always a reliable thing!) friction bearing wheels looked dirty black or maybe dark brown. I think that you are right, that grease got on them and caught the dirt. I don’t ever recall the rusty metal look before roller bearings came in.
Here’s one photo I have seen on the web of journal bearings - the wheel is a darkish gray
]\http://www.brencoqbs.com/101/sld004.htm
Here’s a decent museum site, with several fairly clear pictures of freight cars having trucks with journal bearings (select those prior built prior to 1966) - most museum web sites I looked at had very dark photos, so you couldn’t distigui***he trucks very well
The trucks themselves would be any color the owning railroad decided to paint them. Many roads decided to paint trucks the same color as the body of the car, making our solid strings of all black trucks wholly wrong. The trucks would become caked with road grime, and the bearing covers would get very oily, but you could still tell that the trucks weren’t black.
As for the wheels, the faces were quickly coated with a layer of bearing oil flung out of the bearings, which were generally kept (over)lubed at all major yards. The oils quickly picked up road grime, which in turn was coated by more oil, which was coated in more grime, etc. I represent this by brushing a thick coat of Polly Scale oily black onto the wheel faces. Some proto modelers go so far as adding talcum powder to the paint to make it clumpier. The backsides of the wheels would have an equal mix of rust, road grime and oil on them. I generally just paint them flat black.