Vintage Roundhouse HO 40' AAR Box Car Kit

[cnjman721]

I need to match the paint color of a vintage Roundhouse HO 40' AAR Box Car Kit. It is all metal construction and pre-painted and lettered for CNJ in the pre-liberty logo era. I have tried Tru-color Tuscan red (too red) Tuu-color CNJ Boxcar red (likewise, too red.

I also have a similar model lettered for Great Northern which is painted in the identical color. Not that the original paints are any longer available, but the vintage kit instruction sheet lists the old Roundhouse Model Railroad Paints, including RP-300 Tuscan Red, RP-301 Box car Red, RP-303 Socony Red and RP-305 Lt. Tuscan Red, but I have no way of knowing which of these the CNJ and Great Northern modles are painted with.

From experience, I know that "exact" color matching isn't really possible, but I would like a finished boxcar that doesn't look like an 8 year old painted it.

Any thoughts or experience on this will be greatly appreciated!

 

Ed

[snjroy]

Hi there. I assume you want to do touch-ups. I would buy a few bottles of craft paints of burnt umber, brown and red and try to mix something close. I would test the mix on a scrap piece of wood. A color that is close should be OK once you weather the piece.

Simon

[cnjman721]

Thanks, Simon!

[cnjman721]

For what its worth, I consulted the "Model Railroad Hobbyist -Acrylic-painting-guide-post-Floquil-Portrait" guide and it looks (although I know a color on screen doesn't equal a paint chip) that Floquil Box Car Red equivalent Model Master # MM-4881 is pretty darn close to what I need. I've ordered a bottle to try it out. We'll see how close it is. Don't know if this logic counts, but I'm guessing that a kit like the one I have being produced in the 50s-60s was probably based on Floquil paint.

[hon30critter]

cnjman721

I need to match the paint color of a vintage Roundhouse HO 40' AAR Box Car Kit.

Hi Ed,

I love the old metal bodied freight cars! I just scored a bunch of them on eBay.

As far as matching the paint colour, I would suggest using a small cup with some of the paint out of the bottle in it, and with some white paint and some black paint of the same type on hand when you are doing the matching.  You can then adjust the colour with a very small amount of white if the colour out of the bottle is too dark, or black if the colour is too light. Emphasis on 'small'. You can add colour but you can't take it away.

The other option would be to simply paint the damaged area with a small rectangle  of a similar colour and then call it a patch.

Cheers!!

Dave