Coca-Cola red is, I believe, a registered color.
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coca-cola-red-our-second-secret-formula
But those restrictions only apply when that color is used to sell a similar product. Other registered colors are Tiffany blue, Owens-Corning pink, Post-it canary, Cadbury Purple and one which may actually not be permitted for a common carrier to use would be UPS Brown, since a railroad may be looked upon as a carrier, same as UPS.
Purple?
2016_slides_0057 (2016_08_17 08_08_12 UTC) by Edmund, on Flickr
Not my cuppa-tea, but it WAS the 1970s!
Good luck, Ed
BMMECNYCIH Farmall Red. Ford Blue.
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I honestly do not know that Farmall Red is a unique color. It really looks just bright red to me. Lots of other stuff is painted that color. Ferrari Red is iconic, but it is much warmer in tone than Farmall Red. Also, most Ferraris I see anymore are Black or Yellow, so I think Ferrari has given up on its trademark color.
Did you mean Ford Grabber Blue? My 2011 Mustang was painted that color, and it did turn heads, but since it accounts for less than 10% of Mustangs sold, it is far from iconic.
Onan Green was an Iconic and unique color, but their green generator sets are only installed in RVs now where you cannot even see them.
Waste Management really tried to make a go of it with a unique shade of Purple as their corporate color, but then when political tides turned to environmental concerns they switched their corporate color to green.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
SeeYou190Aside from John Deere Green and Caterpillar Yellow, what colors are really iconic to anything industrial?
IH Farmall Red.
Ford Blue.
Except no one has written a country song with those two in it that I know of.
tstage Which is pretty much the same as Erie, N&W, and Norfolk Southern black...
Which is pretty much the same as Erie, N&W, and Norfolk Southern black...
Paint them pink and purple if you want to.
Jumijo It's a model (toy) railroad. Paint them pink if you want.
It's a model (toy) railroad. Paint them pink if you want.
Use the universal color of Pullman Green. You can lost with other greens like Cascade Green, Glacier Green, Century/Jade Green, Southern green, Maine Central, SP&S, Northern Pacific (don't know the RR name).
There must be others that I haven't listed or forgotten.
Amtrak America, 1971-Present.
I'm not really worried about anyone in particular, and the point has been made, I am working on finding/getting the paints I need.
Steve
If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough!
Aside from John Deere Green and Caterpillar Yellow, what colors are really iconic to anything industrial?
Can anyone really tell Komatsu Yellow from Kobelco Yellow? Did anyone here even know that Komatsu and Kobelco painted their heavy equipment yellow? Kawasaki Yellow is a very distinct color also, but did you even know Kawasaki made an excellent line of heavy front end wheel loaders? Ingersoll Rand paints their vibrating asphault rollers a very distinct light grey that is different from the light gray that O&K paints their excavators. Did you know that? Can you tell them apart? What makes Manitowoc red different than Cummins Apex red? I can tell the difference, can you?
The point is that no casual observer will ever know paint colors of prototype railroads anymore than you know the difference between these specific heavy equipment paint colors.
Those of us who are "in the know" just want you to build and paint stuff. We don't care.
Whose approval are you worried about?
Basically, you can use the same color as a prototype railroad and not worry about being called a copycat because the real railroads used similar colors. For example, the Erie used the same shade of yellow as UP Armour Yellow, and Rock Island and the Lackawanna used the same shade of maroon. Bottom line, this is a hobby, not a job.
So I have no worries then, thanks!
After you weather, which you should do for your hopper, that you posted in the diner, too, it won't look like the same green. If 5 of us weathered the same green loco, they will all look different as well.
Edit I think I made that sentence awkward from extremely awkward.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
I hope no one notices my engines are painted New York Central black.
MisterBeasleyGiven the way model paint supplies have dried up over the last few years, you might want to consider using paints you can count on having available. There are even annoying laws about shipping paints to and from some places. I don't have an airbrush, so I choose most of my paints right off the hardware store rattle can shelf. I have a couple of diesel switchers that I want to r
There are actually more model paints, in more colors, than ever before. True the availability of "model railroad" paints is less but there is has been a huge increase in "military model and wargaming" paints. (Tamiya -an old standby, Model Master (Testors) - another old standby, MIG, AK Interactive, Vallejo and others) There are pants specifically formulated for airbrush, for brushing, and/or both, and some are available in rattle cans. Many of these paints are very close or even virtually identical to the old model railroad colors.
In the old days there was "X Railroad orange" which most but not all modelers just accepted as correct. Now it is more difficult in part because of all the choices. .
There have also been changes in hardware paints and many of them are usable. The main problem with hardwae sprays is the amount of paint they put out. Modeling usually requires a finer touch.
Artist acrylic paints are also an option in many cases
While there are standards for prototype paint the correct color or a model is still highly subjective. Paint may vary slightly from batch to batch and age and weathering can have a large impact on the appearance. I've seen a post about a modeler who painted his models with paint from the railroad paint shop who was often told that the color was wrong.
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
Mr. B makes a good point about availability. Also, I came to regret using model acrylic paint (Rock Island Blue and Midnight Blue) for my freelance St.Paul Route. I chose them just as acrylic model RR paint was becoming available, and didn't realize the acrylic paint would gum up my fairly expensive internal-mix airbrushes. Eventually I gave up and found the closest colors I could in Tamiya's spray can line. Their spray cans have a fine nozzle, and deliver a finer spray than the typical 'rattle can' paint from a hardware store. Fortunately, blue fades pretty quickly, so I just can explain the difference as being due to weather and time.
The PRR had Brunswick Green.
A lot of other railroads used that same color but called it Black.
Given the way model paint supplies have dried up over the last few years, you might want to consider using paints you can count on having available. There are even annoying laws about shipping paints to and from some places. I don't have an airbrush, so I choose most of my paints right off the hardware store rattle can shelf.
I have a couple of diesel switchers that I want to repaint as Milwaukee engines. Finding Milwaukee Orange was very difficult until a small manufacturer around here did a small batch run of their spray cans in that color. I'd literally been looking for years, only to fnd the old standbys like Testors and Floquil out of stock or discontinued. I even bought a number of other orange cans to find a "close enough' variety, but I was never happy with any of those.
My Moose Bay Transit Authority has no prototype, so I chose a color scheme based on two contrasting colors, one of which was light enough to apply decals to and get the colors close to what I'd printed. Both are hardware store rattle cans, and as I've added new trolleys and buses to the fleet, I've had no trouble finding the paints again.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Before 1968, Canadian Pacific used maroon as it's main color on passenger cars. That was because they borrowed it from their US subsidiary, the Soo Line. Soo Line used it because they took control of the Wisconsin Central in 1909, and W.C. used wood passenger cars made of redwood. The cars weren't painted, just varnished (common in the wooden car days, hence the term "varnish" being used in the old days to refer to passenger trains). Soo painted it's cars to match the natural redwood color.
Great Northern "Big Sky Blue" is a touch darker than the light blue used by the Rock Island and IIRC L&HR, but all are still pretty close.
In the early days of diesels and streamliners, several railroads used Pullman Green as one of the main colors.
I recently needed to paint some Canadian Pacific items. I looked at all the bottles of airbrush paint I have on the shelf including a few shades of green which is the colour I needed. I had a close but not perfect match, I was not buying yet another bottle of green to cover 1 sq cm of area. If I was entering a modeling contest where the judges walk around with their paint palette chart to check, maybe. Close is good enough and not close is fine if it is a fictitious RR.
Putting things on hold until the perfect piece of the puzzle is acquired is for aerospace, not railways. One only need to look at RR equipment and structures in a time-lapse fashion to realize that the colour chosen to paint something was because it was the paint can closest one to the door of the shed.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
NWP SWP...the question is will I be able to "get away with" using another railroads paints?
Well, if you consider that most model railroad paints are labelled as specific railroad colours, it would be difficult to not use another railroad's colours. Unless I'm painting a model to represent one belonging to a specific railroad, I seldom pay much attention to the name on the bottle, and instead, look at the colour. And in some cases, I'll custom mix colours to match specific prototype colours if I'm not all that impressed by what's commercially available.
I painted this locomotive for a friend, whose freelanced road represented a fictional affiliate of the CNR. The paint is CNR Green #11, from SMP, in my opinion, the best representation of the prototype's colour. The paint scheme and striping (the latter done with leftover SMP Accucals) follows general CNR practices, while the name was done with individual characters....
While the loco above was intended to look CNR-ish, for your locomotive, the colours probably won't be recognised by most viewers as ones belonging to a specific prototype, especially since you're drawing from more than one inspiration.Equally important as the colours is the layout of the colours and separations thereof: are you planning for striping at colour changes? In most cases, even though it's an additional step, striping simplifies the painting process, as it gives sharp demarcations betwen the colours, and helps to hide minor bleed-unders of paint.Another consideration to keep in mind is what models you're painting. Some body styles are best suited to specific styles: F- and E-units generally got paint scheme layouts suggested by EMD, but those didn't always translate well when applied to hood units.Also, as time went by, many roads opted for simpler paint schemes - easier and cheaper to apply, and applicable to almost any body style.
For my own freelanced roads, I took inspiration from some prototypes, but altered them to suit my own tastes...CNR-inspired for these...
...and perhaps Nickel Plate or Erie here...
...while most got a strictly freelanced version which looked acceptable on both cab locos...
...and hood units...
I painted a lot of locos for this railroad (over 70)...
...but also used the same paint layout for some of my freelanced switchers. I kept the cream colour, but mixed what I considered a suitable green to replace the prototype's maroon. The cab numbers (all lettering, except the number boards, is painted, not decals or dry transfers) were of my own devising, and involved a few extra steps...
I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
Wayne
NWP SWP OK I'm getting closer to settling on a set of colors for my railroads paint scheme, I am thinking of using ERIE D. And L. Greens and SOUTHERN green, the question is will I be able to "get away with" using another railroads paints?
OK I'm getting closer to settling on a set of colors for my railroads paint scheme, I am thinking of using ERIE D. And L. Greens and SOUTHERN green, the question is will I be able to "get away with" using another railroads paints?
IIRC, back when the Florida East Coast used a red and yellow scheme, I believe it was a combo of UP Yellow and Santa Fe Red.
- Douglas
OK got it I can use other railroads paint colors, thanks.
I found this site, http://www.myperfectcolor.com
All I have to do is get OE paint codes.
NWP SWPthe title of the thread has nothing to do with anything, I was just trying to be creative,
Mike
NWP SWPAnd not be thought of as a copy cat.
Modeling means being a copycat to some extent, doesn't it? Just what fussy visitor are you trying to keep so happy?
I doubt if many folks have a particular railroad's green so embedded in their memory that they could look and say "ooh you have mixed Reading green with Chicago & North Western green there." Indoor lighting changes everything anyway, as I well know from looking at my authentic C&NW trust plate, painted genuine C&NW green by no less than the C&NW itself, and compare that to what Floquil and other makes called "C&NW green."
Using a particular prototype's "green" might be one way to have a good chance that that green or some version of it will be available and will match, or almost, for years to come. Mixing your own green or finding a non railroad green to use might make future color matches a real challenge.
Dave Nelson
To clarify, 1 the title of the thread has nothing to do with anything, I was just trying to be creative, 2 I was wanting to know if I could use paint that was used by another railroad. And not be thought of as a copy cat.
I know for a fact that EMD's sales department referred to other company colors in their pitches to customers. When the Bellefonte Central, a very small railroad in Central PA, ordered its first diesel unit, the sales agent recommended NYO&W gray with a Southern green stripe.
Yes, you cna get away with this, because despite the specific examples you listed, there are plenty where multiple railroads used the same color (but maybe called it something different). The key is going back to the paint manufacturer - there aren't an infinite number of them, and there weren't back then. Many of those railroad colors would have a code number in DuPont, or Sherwin-Williams. Even a single railroad could use different suppliers at different times, leading to slightly different shades of the 'same' color, and due to slight differences in the composition, different weathering over time.
SO pick whatever colors appeal to you, just don't do what I did when I was 8 or 9 and go with colors that are too garish. I used the colors of my elementary school as my railroad colors, a bright blue and gold (yellow). I painted one loco and one passenger car and it was neat for about 10 minutes, then I began to regret it. Dulled out, the blue probbaly would have been OK, it was like the darker blue Sante Fe used, but out of the can shiny it was bad. ANd the yellow, no amount of dullcote woould have fixed that. It's like the roof of the loco cab and car were one solid safety stripe. Oh, and I painted the loco underframe and the car trucks silver. Hey, I was like 8.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.