Here's the guy responsible for many of us trying to match paint colors!
http://www.shorpy.com/node/21451?size=_original#caption
Interesting...
Regards, Ed
Kodachrome was amazing stuff, and Jack Delano was a master with it. The skin tones look so good I am inclined to believe that the colors of the paint samples in the photo are also very likely quite accurate and usable.
We have yet to know how well today's digital photos will survive given the changes in preservation media that can almost make the issue moot. A floppy disc may be in perfect condition, but if you have no way to play it ... My outside hard drive holds many photos but if USB ports cease to exist I am up the creek without a paddle.
I would also point out that last night I played one of the first music CDs I ever acquired (and in the 1980s they were billed as lasting forever even if you spread peanut butter on them and rubbed them against the floor) is no longer listenable due to "bronzing" - deterioration due to air getting between the metal disc in the middle and the thin plastic covering on either side. Every CD from that particular label from that era has the same bronzing problem which I observed too late to make back up copies.
And for years I have preserved all my photos on CD-Rs ....
Dave Nelson
I agree Dave, once again they had it right the first time.
I've got a boxful of my father's B&W negatives that date back to the late 1930s. Most of them are still in very good shape. A few are damaged, especially those that had a big fingerprint on them. The oils on your hand aren't good for film. I doubt most people will be able to access all those selfies they're taking in another 70 years.
Charles Cushman used Kodachrome and his photos from the late 30s and 40s are in surprisingly good condition. If you're not familiar with his collection you can see it here...
http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/index.jsp
Not a lot of train pics, but there are some. Plenty of shots of Chicago and NYC in the 40s and 50s for those who model the transition era.
Steve S
Somewhere on the web, the conversation that I once found about the green on D&RGW boiler jackets must still exist. It filled a single giant page of HTML with argument, and concluded with someone observing that the Colorado Railroad Museum had once had a dried-out can of green paint that had allegedly been mixed by the shop force at Salida, and was preserved for precisely that reason- until someone unknowingly thought it was just a dried-up can of old paint, and threw it out.
We have it easy, American railroad liveries in the B&W era were pretty simple: black,white, Pullman green, boxcar red, red oxide, Tuscan Red, and Reefer Orange will get you a long way- the Brits devote whole books to just figuring out what the colors looked like.
http://mprailway.blogspot.com
"The first transition era - wood to steel!"