Is accurate colorization of early black and white photos still beyond our technical capability? I see very few.. perhaps there's not enough interest in that beyond modellers wondering what color that 1850 coach really was. Could perhaps be a doctoral thesis for someone doing postgrad work in history.
Accuracy may be forever beyond our ability since it is dependent on human memory to get the colors right. Old paint chips will fade so who will remember the original shade?
I think the problem is that you have to have something with a known, confirmed color to start with. Anything done to restore clarity and maybe boost contrast for detail changes the picture and therefore any information about what a color might have been. As will reprints, pictures published in a book (lack the detail of the print), etc.
I have, somewhere in my collection of stuff, software that will colorize B&W pictures if you feed it information on what the color needs to be. When I first used it I was interested in coloring a SF PA that was in B&W. Started with the red, and had to pick many different parts of the red area to start from to get the coloring to look right as some was in shadow and some not, faded, dirty, ect.
There has been some interesting work in determining likely absorption and reflection of 'old' images when some of the optical characteristics of other elements in a scene are known, or if some characteristics of the emulsion chemistry are known. Someone in one of the historical railroad forums said that it was possible for someone with extensive experience in Black-and-white photography to 'read' some colors from something like an unmanipulated or properly 'pushed' contact print, but I'd expect that to apply far more to relatively modern film, not pre-1900s Kodak film or glass-plate negatives and such.
I don't think it will ever be possible.
There are too many variables: There are different types of emulsion/film (panchromatic, orthochromatic, wet plate) each viewing colors differently, emphazising some colors and hiding others.
Then there are the local conditions like lighting where the same original color might look differently on a B/W photo.
Information taken from: http://utahrails.net/russian-iron.php
Here are two samples (small rectangular, large round) of Russion Iron photographed from different angles on the same day over the course of one hour around noon: http://historyoftherails.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/VT-22-Inyo-sample-on-SP-coach-1010-roof-sample-6-7-2008-6-views-web-1-1024x679.jpg
from this site: http://historyoftherails.com/2-samples-of-russia-iron-6-views/
And that are just different lighting angles. Add to this the different emulsion's color perception and you see why I believe why it can't be done.Regards, Volker
I just got a book of fire service post cards from the "golden age" of same. One such image had an old hose wagon tinted red, when in fact the original was white. I'm sure the tinter had no idea.
The color issue is compounded by things like Brunswick green, which certainly appears black.
Some time back, one of the model railroad magazines had a piece about a fellow who painted a model locomotive with paint straight from the paint drum at the real railroad. All his modelling friends told him it was the wrong color.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
And remember, back in the black n' white photo days it was common practice for photographers to use different colored filters on their lenses depending on what kind of effect they were after.
Red filters, yellow filters, blue filters, all were out there, and they rendered colors on those black and white negatives in various ways.
So Volker's right, there's probably no way to reliably interpret colors from black and white photos.
By the way, it drives me a little crazy to see something colorized in the wrong colors!
I have a hard time getting the color right on a COLOR slide I've scanned. Colorizing B&W? That makes my head feel like it has bees in it!
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Difficult maybe.. but impossible? I doubt it.. but who knows. Someone will figure it out. You know, in the 1850s no one would have believed that we would ever know what stars are made of. And then along came spectroscopy, and within 10 or 20 years we knew more about the makeup of celestial bodies many thousands of light years away than we know of our own planet.
I wouldn't hold my breath. As described above there are too many unknown.
As examples a few photos of the same type of steam locomotive. I have chosen the SP A-3 4-4-2 as I researched the locomomotive when I had to paint my brass model.
First #3048's builder's photo around 1905: https://books.google.de/books?id=ZaG8AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=%22southern+pacific%22+4-4-2+atlantic+-ho+-model+-lionel&source=bl&ots=Du_D1pwvbn&sig=SSsFOGoyxO0LzIsSIQuVymD_wf0&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiA7aKwlK3ZAhVCDewKHbf2AdUQ6AEIcTAO#v=onepage&q=%22southern%20pacific%22%204-4-2%20atlantic%20-ho%20-model%20-lionel&f=false
SP #3068 in 1920:
https://sites.google.com/site/atlanticsteamlocomotives/_/rsrc/1406133484142/home/atlantics-built-1895-1901/1902/1903/1904/1905-1906/1907/1908-1909/IMG_0008-006.jpg
SP #3064 between 1921 (Superheater added) and 1930 (boiler used for 0-8-0):
Adding to what Volker said about Russian (planished) iron, I've done some on-line research, just for fun and curiousity, as to just what the stuff looked like, and on various sites there just doesn't seem to be any real consensus.
Looking at Kodachrome photos of Erie K-1 steamers taken in the late 40's and early 50's the Russian iron boiler jackets on those units appear to have a sky-blue coloration, but who knows, that could just be a color freak-out depending on the light conditions. I've also seen color movies of New Jersey Central Pacifics where the boiler jackets have a dark blue appearance, but I know that's just a color freak-out, they were all painted black at the time.
So, the only way to get the colors right, for modeling purposes or otherwise, is just solid research, it looks like nothing else will do.
By the way, there was a steam locomotive restoration done at the Henry Ford Dearborn Village Museum recently, and the restorers painted the boiler jacket a light metal-flake blue because the wanted a Russian iron look! It does look great!
An aside, those Russian iron websites aren't even sure how the Russians even made the stuff. Enjoying the monopoly the Russians wisely kept the process secret. Post World War One improvements in paints made Russian iron obsolete anyway, so no-one missed it after the Bolshevik Revolution.
And smoke box graphiting? Back in the 90's the late, lamented "Locomotive and Railway Preservation" magazine ran an article on how it's done the old time way. Cotton waste was dipped in oil, then dipped in a bucket of graphite, then rubbed into the bare steel of the smokebox. It did, of course, have to be renewed from time to time. Graphiting had to be done to prevent corrosion, paints available in those days couldn't stand the heat of the smokebox for very long.
Improvements in paints post World War Two made graphiting unnessary, but of course the steam era was coming to and end by then. The Lackawanna used an aluminum-based paint for smokeboxes toward the end, which faded to a graphite look!
To really know the color of Russia Iron, you have to answer the question of:
"What color is a mirror?"
Russia Iron did not have a fully reflective surface; it was more like a fogged mirror.
Some railroads ran mostly out in the open and so people thought the boilers were "blue". Other railroads ran in tree lined areas, so folk thought the boilers were "green". When the cost and maintenance of Russia Iron grew to the point where the railroads didn't want to pay that much, they just painted their locomotives the color that most folk thought they were to begin with.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
For some reason no painters were commissioned to record important events such as the driving of the last spikes. Interestingly, when one reads about the construction of the early railroads some mention is occasionally made of those pesky photographers and their elaborate equipment. Too bad.. had we had some decent painters present also we would at least know the colors, and we might have a better appreciation of those events.
Russia iron is not particularly specular, and it is not 'blued' (this came as a great surprise to me in my teens!) I believe we have had some highly technical threads on how both the original and the 'American' planished iron was made, and why its relatively 'weatherproof' surface has the peculiar range of colors it does. There is also some good tech referenced on RyPN and a couple of metalworking lists. It is usually a mottled sort of green. A very interesting process ... but it's definitely cheaper to use painted rolled sheet once big commercial rolling mills to produce what we'd call coil stock today were put into service.
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