I have modeled steam locos and have never known the answer as to why so many cab roofs were painted red. Was it a certain type of paint such as heat proof graphite or somehow an established “habit” or tradition? As I start on my new layout and being in the transition era I thought it’s time to find the answer. [I]
Anybody?
Bing&Kathy,
Can’t really answer,your question, as to why? But, possibly, a maybe. Red,Yellow and Blue,are Primary colors, that mean’s you can not mix any other colors,to get them. So that being the case, they choose, Red,over Yellow and Blue. Just my Thought!!
Cheers, [D]
Frank
Gidday, after surfing the interweb it would appear that it is not red paint but red lead used for waterproofing cab roofs and tender tops, which most railroads then painted black. Reading between the lines it would also seem that modeling licence has been used and that there are fair more modeled “red roofs” than there was on the actual prototype.
Hopefully some one will have more concrete evidence.
Cheers, the Bear.
Bear,
Yeah! That makes,a lot of sense, Golden Gate Bridge, Red, Zinc Chromate Primer, made with, Chromium, a hard, metallic,chemical element resistant to corrosion.
Cheers, [D]
Frank
Don’t forget the cab roof was hot from the heat of the firebox and it was to keep the heat from blistering the paint.
A steam locomotive cab lacked creature comforts. It would bake you in the summer and then soak and freeze you in the winter from condense water.
You should post this question on the Classic Trains forum where you are more likely to get a definitive answer.
From what I have read about red roofs on the cabins of steam engines, the red paint was an iron oxide primer, applied to deal with potential rust issues.
Rich
Hi, and welcome to the Forum!
The “red” paint - with varieties called boxcar red, barn red, etc. - was pretty common back in the early mid 20th century. It was easily derived from the source ores (forgot exactly which), which made it cheap, plentiful, and of course decorative.
According to the 1929 instruction for painting steam locomotives put out by the PRR. The first application of paint to the roof is freight car color which is PRR Tuscan red. The second application is one part black / three parts freight car color. The third repainting is equal parts black and freight car color. This was for both wood and steel cabs above the rain gutter. The decks of tender cisterns are freight car color. As the locomotives aged and got repainted the roofs would get darker. Funny it was not a mixture of red and dark green locomotive enamel. There is no reason why it was painted this way. Probably a standard put out by the road foreman of engines at the time. My best guess would be money savings in paint. Since they had tens of thousands of freight cars they would buy hundreds of thousands gallons of freight car paint.
Pete
Read something many years ago that the roof of the cabs and tender decks were painted with an acid resistant paint to protect it from the effects of the acid compounds in the exhaust smoke. Why not the entire loco? Acids mixed with steam condensing on the roof was very corrosive.
Friends of mine who burn coal for heat have the insides of the metal flue pipes coated in an acid resistant ceramic compound to prolong the life of the pipes
Regardiing “why not the entire loco?” I suspect the answer to that is because the lagging (the sheet metal covering) got replaced at regular service intervals whenever major boiler inspections and service took place. There was probably no good reason to paint that with the red preservative type paint. Good old engine black was probably good enough. That is just my guess of course.
Regards, Vic Bitleris
The roofs were treated with RED LEAD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II,IV)_oxide
Lead tetraoxide is most often used as a pigment for primer paints for iron objects. Due to its toxicity, its use is being limited. In the past, it was used in combination with linseed oil as a thick, long-lasting anti-corrosive paint
Since only a few railroads painted the cab roofs in this manner, I think that it may be more of a decorative touch with, perhaps, some supposedly-preservative qualities. I’m guessing that the use of a similar colour on tender decks may have included an anti-slip material.
Locally, the only red loco roofs of which I’m aware were those of the TH&B, and I’ve copied their paint and lettering scheme, right down to the white-walled tires, for my freelanced road:
Wayne
Nowhere on the painting instruction/ standard said anything about special paint except for the smoke box and fire box. They call it front end paint. Heat resistant black graphite with aluminum powder added.
I have the 1929 instruction in PDF form but it will not let me post it here.
Pete
Red roofs on steam engines were pretty common, actually. You’d have to go through a lot of pics to get a percentage, but I’d guess it was at least 25% or more…maybe more like 50%.
Stix;
It really depended on the particular Railroad Standards. For a time the Southern Railway was divided into East lines and West lines, The East lines had green roofs, if passenger, and black if freight. The west lines painted theirs black. When this changed, many of the shops started choosing their own roof “colors”. As a result, some were green, some were black, and some were red. It got to where it depended on which shop had last done the overhaul of the engine, as to which color it had on its roof.
Add CB&Q to the list of roads that had a “red” cab roof. I don’t know about the tender decks.
SP used interurban red for its cab roofs during the heyday of special paint, no concidence that this was also used by PE for its interurban fleet.
Dave
In the 19th Century, steam locomotives were very ornate. Wood was varnished, driver rims were often painted a trim color, etc. The steam locomotive represented and advertised the railroad that owned it. And the engineer and fireman (along with a wiper for work when the locomotive was done for the day) were assigned a specific engine.
Also, each locomotive manufacturer had their standard color scheme, but each customer was free to change or customize to taste (for a small additional fee).
After some experiementation, boilers were usually lagged with Russian or American Iron due to lack of heat-resistant paints. Smoke boxes were given a graphite/linseed oil finish for the same reason.
The development of better paint and the cost-cutting of Vanderbilt and others caused a lot of transition to all-black or nearly all-black locomotives. But even well into the 20th Century, passenger locomotives in particular were frequently much more colorful than straight black. Some were even streamlined to match the streamlined cars.
Fred W
…modeling foggy coastal Oregon, where it’s always 1900…
and no, my free-lance railroads still believe in polished brass trim, graphite smoke boxes, red lead cab roofs, and maybe some additional color for the older locomotives as hold-over from as-delivered…
As I’ve understood it, red was preferred over other colors such as blue or yellow because it was available and inexpensive. Paints generally got their pigments from clays, which tended to be red in many areas. That’s why farmers used red on their barns, too. This doesn’t tell us why black tended to be preferred for the rest of the loco. Black pigments often came from soot, which was also readily available and inexpensive, so I’ll leave it to others to answer that one.
It’s also interesting that many roads used red paint on major areas of the tender. These included B&O and PRR, among others. B&O’s use of red on cab roofs seemed to be a regional thing. I understand red was standard on engines running on the St. Louis line, but was a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t thing on other divisions. I’ve been told the railroad’s standards make no mention of red. PRR generally used red on smaller engines; but even the big ones had red tender decks. By the way, the “freight car color” that PRR used was not a match for Tuscan Red, which was the color used on passenger equipment. I have to qualify that last statement. I am speaking of the transition era, post WWII, on B&O and PRR. It’s possible that these colors could have been entirely different in earlier eras, but they are out of my era so I can’t say for certain.
In the early '60’s, Buffalo Creek & Gauley’s 2-8-0’s had red cab roofs (and tender decks too, I think); green window sashes; aluminum trim on tires, running board edges, etc.; and gold lettering. A beautiful sight!