I have one of the J-Class locomotives from Norfolk and Western. I want to build a Powhattan Arrow passenger train. I have some old smoothside passenger cars that I want to paint and decal in the Tuscan Red livery. I've been trying to find Tuscan Red without any luck. Once upon a time you could find it. Would someone please tell me where I can find it now, or what the mix would be to blend my own? Also, where can I buy the Powhattan Arrow decal set. Thanks in advance.
There's many different types of Tuscan Red paint available...in fact, the problem might not be not finding any, but that there's so many to choose from: light tuscan, dark tuscan, Pennsylvania tuscan etc. I don't think anyone makes a specific N&W tuscan, but you could maybe check around online, I'd assume there's a N&W historical society that would have some tips on the best color to use. Model Railroader had an article a year or two back on modelling N&W passenger trains in N, that might have included some painting tips??
Otherwise you could just try to find which paint matches the tuscan on your engine best from what's available:
Tuscan Red paints in the Walthers catalogue.
Scalecoat Paint has an N&W Red Paint, N&W Tuscan was a much brighter red than the standard Tuscan Red. You might check out a bottle at you LHS if they stock it. It is in both the Scalecoat I and Scalecoat II lines. I will check my bottle to see if it is close.
Rick
Rule 1: This is my railroad.
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While, they aren't exact models, but I painted these HO cars using Microscale's 87-391 decal set & Polly Scale CB&Q Chinese Red:
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
I'm not sure how close the colour is in this old photo, but I believe that this car was part of the original Powhattan Arrow. The picture was taken in Grimsby, Ontario, in the mid-'70s, and is of a NRHS charter behind CNR Mountain 6060.
To my eye, the colour looks very similar to CPR Maroon, which is available from both Scalecoat and SMP Industries.
Wayne
The PRRT&HS currently has a paint committee laboring to get exact shades of all PRR paints notably the dark green locomotive enamel (DGLE) also known as Brunswick green and Tuscan. The only problem to my thinking is the paints of the day were infinitely worse than what is available today and faded quickly due to UV deterioration from sunlight and oxidation. Modelers often think they should only use one color and then run it under lighting that affects the way it appears such as the various flourescent and incandescent bulb types. The point is that unless the entire train of cars was shopped for rebuild at the same time (highly unlikely) there is going to be variation in the colors within the train. We tend to get hung up on making all the cars identical and to me it detracts from a prototypical look.
ndbprr The PRRT&HS currently has a paint committee laboring to get exact shades of all PRR paints notably the dark green locomotive enamel (DGLE) also known as Brunswick green and Tuscan. The only problem to my thinking is the paints of the day were infinitely worse than what is available today and faded quickly due to UV deterioration from sunlight and oxidation. Modelers often think they should only use one color and then run it under lighting that affects the way it appears such as the various flourescent and incandescent bulb types. The point is that unless the entire train of cars was shopped for rebuild at the same time (highly unlikely) there is going to be variation in the colors within the train. We tend to get hung up on making all the cars identical and to me it detracts from a prototypical look.
Just as a side, while what you say is moslty true, Paint tends to be like sound and water, it doesmn't scale well. In this case, when you look at a 1:1 train, the eye can't process all of a car beacuse of it's size . In HO, the eye can take not only one car, but sometimes the second or third car as well, and easily distinguish the different shades. The point being that There is paint shade differences, but they stick out more in modelling to us. If we wwre a half inch tall, I bet that a difference in paint doesn't stick out as much, and the train sounds better.
Back to N&W
-Morgan
I'm with Morgan on this.
For instance, my problem is with the Rio Grande "Grande Gold". I'm in the process of making up a 1950 Rio Grande "Prospector" using Walther's Rio Grande lightweight cars. All good and well. However, their "Grande Gold" cars are a much more 'yellowish' shade than the Genesis F-3 units I've got pulling them, which tend more to yellow-orange. It doesn't really bother me that much, because it's kind of a cool looking train.
And I've seen other Rio Grande F-units from various manufacturers that run the gamut from straight yellow to almost "Daylight" orange.
So it's no surprise to me that Tuscan Red can turn out to have as many variables as there are manufacturers either producing the paint or the painted equipment. It could also have to do with the age and the condition of the prototype paint chips that were analyzed to get the color.
As Morgan says, if we were all 1/2" tall, the differences in shades might not be that noticeable at all.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Why worry. None of the manufacturers have gotten theirs even half right either. I wish I could remember the code, but real N&W red was a DuPont color, and was exactly the same as a Chrysler car color. Sam Putney of Shaeffer's Crossing bought some and had it made up in little two ounce bottles oh so many moons ago.
As she sat in the Va Museum of Transportation the last time I saw her, even 611 doesn't have the same shade of red she once did. I have a few of the old Vanishing Vistas postcards, and I got a bunch of perfecto 35mm pictures of 611 and the matching train in 1982, and they don't match exactly, either.
I had a brass 'J' custom painted to match 611 in 1982. Gorgeous. Of course my Bachmann 'J's and my BLI 'J's and my Sunset streamlined K are all a very slightly different hue... I give up. I just say they faded in service. The Rivarossi cars looked good but are a tad too dark, as are the later Bachmann cars. Interesting they did not match their cars and the stripe. The Sunset painted brass cars were too bronze. The E&B Valley pre-painted kit tail cars were excellent, but man it's hard to make a kit and not mar the paint. The Con-Cor car's color was kinda okay but obviously 70' was bad wrong. There are some other errors floating about.
The tail car in the pic above is not one of the two original N&W Powhatan Arrow tail cars, either. It belongs to the Roanoke Chapter and I forget where it came from originally now.
The easiest thing I have found is to take some Testor's Dark Red and add a little regular Red until it pretty much matches the stripe of your 'J' and go for it. Good luck.
Proper shade of Tuscan Red for the Boston & Maine is also a debatable subject. Accupaint offers a B&M Passenger Maroon which net legend claims was mixed to match a gallon can of Tuscan acquired from the Billerica shops sometime in the 1970's. I tried it and think it comes out too *** brown. So far my best B&M passenger maroon is a rattle can of Rust-Oleum 1964 Colonial Red (20066 19648). Sense of the meeting down at the club was it was maybe a tad too red, but quite acceptable. This club has some very knowledgeable B&M people.
Your N&W tuscan might be the same deal.
Also be aware that color photos can shift the colors a lot, depending upon the type of film, and the lighting at the time. For instance Kodachrome was a very red happy emulsion that rendered reds brighter and more cheerful than real. Ektachrome favored blue and green, giving a much cooler color rendition. Late afternoon sunlight is also very red. No only that, but the color balance can be altered in the development process. And the color printing process allows the printer to alter the color balance to suit his ideas. Then if your train room is lit by fluorescents, be aware that reds look poorly under fluorescent light. A very bright fire engine red will look darker and more maroon like under fluorescents. True maroons go brown.
Just to confuse the issue, the eye adapts to colors. Ever notice that when you first don sunglasses the world looks very green. But after ten minutes colors look reasonably normal until you take to glasses off. The eye adapts and compensates for the green of the sunglasses. It does likewise to adapt to the odd color of fluorescent light.
My advice is go with any paint that looks right to your eye. To be real about it, evaluate the paint color after it dries on a test car.
Also, the color of paint depends somewhat upon the color of the surface under it. Many paints don't cover all that well. I'd give all the cars a prime coat of red auto primer (rattle can from auto parts store) first, and then give them a top coat of your final choice for N&W Tuscan. The primer does cover extremely well, and the color is not far removed from tuscan, which helps the top coat to cover it well.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com